Chapters from childhood; reminiscences of an artist's granddaughter

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CHAPTERS FROM
CHILDHOOD

JULIET €fa^4

Juliet Hueffer (aged 4)

(Mrs. Soskice)
After a draiuing by Ford Madox-Bro-ivn

CHAPTERS FROM
CHILDHOOD

Reminiscences of an Artist's Granddaughter

By
\jULIET M. SOSKICE

With a Foreword by
A. G. GARDINER

Illustrated with Portraits

LONDON

SELWYN & BLOUNT, LTD.

21 YORK BUILDINGS, ADELPHI

First published 1921

FOREWORD

THE literature of childhood is not voluminous.
There is abundant literature and often admir-
able literature for the child, fairy tales and tales of
adventure, and animal stories of the " Black Beauty "
genre. Swift even turned his terrific wrath with
mankind to the uses of the nursery, and Bunyan
made the agonies of the spiritual pilgrim as thrilling
and vivid an experience to the child as the tap of
Pew's stick on the frosty ground in ** Treasure
Island." But the literature of childhood, the litera-
ture which re-creates the thought and feelings of the
child mind when the experiences of life are new and
strange, and before the glamour of the revelation
has faded into the light of common day, are rare.
It demands many unusual qualities : an intense
visual memory, an imaginative sympathy, and that
power of recalling emotion long after the emotion
has passed which has been described as the essential
quality of poetry. It was in this evocation of the
child that the genius of Dickens touched its highest
expression, and there is no better title to immortality

VI FOREWORD

than the first part of " David Copperfield." The
slighter sketches of Kenneth Graham in " The
Golden Age " and " Dream Days " have the same
revealing beauty ; but it is the beauty of childhood
seen through the medium of disillusioning years.
The humour and the joy are the character of the
child, but the pathos is the pathos of memory. In
these " Chapters from Childhood " we have, I think,
an indisputable addition to the authentic literature
of childhood. The writer had the advantage of an
unusual setting for her experiences. To have had
Ford Madox-Brown for grandfather and playmate,
to have lived in the Rossetti circle was to have had
an introduction to life of a quality that falls to few,
and though it is not the circumstances of childhood,
but the emotional reaction to circumstances, which
is the soul of its literature, this record gains from the
setting. The picture of F. M. B. in his old age, as
seen through the eyes of his " little pigeon," has the
untroubled beauty of the child vision, but no less
remarkable are the thumbnail sketches, at once artless
and penetrating, of the nameless and ordinary people
who flit across the field of view, the amiable poUce-
man, the lovesick cabman, the Reverend Mother,
the nuns, the domestic servants. They are called
from the past with a sudden freshness and a certainty
of touch that convey the sense of personal contact.

FOREWORD Vll

They appear only to disappear, but they dwell in the
memory with the significance of permanent types of
the human drama. But the chief person on the little
stage is the child herself, and it is as a record of the
first impressions of things and the first intellectual
and emotional reaction to ideas, that these chapters
are chiefly valuable. The name of Mrs. Soskice is
familiar to the reading world, through her remarkable
rendering of the great poem of Nekrassov, " The
Poet of the People's Sorrow," the Piers Plowman of
Russian literature. In this book she reveals an
original gift of a high order from which the public
will expect much.

A. G. GARDINER.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

THESE reminiscences, written a long time ago,
are not a recital of facts from day to day, with
stated names and dates, but merely the presentation
of certain scenes and incidents of childhood, such as
often remain clearly in the memory long after
childhood has passed.

I trust that the memory of my late grandfather,
Ford Madox-Brown, whom I have portrayed here,
as far as my account goes, as faithfully, I think, as if
I had had recourse to many dates and documents ;
and that of my late uncle, William Michael Rossetti,
whose household also figures in these notes, will
serve as an apology for their appearance.

The fact that my mother, Mrs. Francis Hueffer,
was, for the most part, ill and away during the period
of my life herein recorded, and that my brothers,
Oliver and Ford Madox-Hueffer, were boys at school
older than myself, accounts for their being so little
mentioned in these recollections.

I have included the chapter about my life in the
convent because, I fancy, life in convent-schools is
little known here in England, and may prove of
interest to some readers.

J. s.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

FOREWORD, BY A. G. GARDINER . . V

author's preface . . . . ix

I. SOCIAL REFORMERS .... I

II. IN MY grandfather's HOUSE . . 30

III. THE convent 74

IV. I GO TO GERMANY .... I46

V. I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN . 201

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING
PAGE

Juliet Hueffer (Mrs. Soskice), aged 4 Frontispiece
From a coloured drawing by Ford Madox-
Brown.

Ford Madox-Brown 30

From a drawing by Mrs. Catherine HueiFer

Mrs. Ford Madox-Brown ... 42

From a pencil drawing by Dante Gabriel
Rossetti.

Ford Madox-Brown, on his Death-bed . 68
" Drawn by candle-light with an aching
heart " by Frederick Shields.

Oliver Madox-Brown, on the Night after

HIS Death 72

From a drawing by Ford Madox-Brown.

Mrs. Soskice, 191 5 . . . . . 146
From a drawing by E. Gertrude Thomson.

Mrs. Catherine Hueffer (Cathy Madox-
Brown) 202

By Ford Madox-Brown.

F

CHAPTER I

SOCIAL REFORMERS
I

OR some time after my father's death my
mother was ill and away, and I was sent to live
with my aunt and uncle.* They lived in a large
grey house with steps up to the front door, and steps
down to the area, and a great many stairs leading up
to the top landings. The walls of all the rooms and
staircases were covered with pictures, many with
very bright colours in broad gilt frames. There
were some portraits of other relations painted by a
famous artist who was my uncle's brother.^

I had four cousins, who, though they were young,
were social reformers. Mary was seven ; Helen
was nine ; Arthur was about fourteen ; and Olive
was fifteen at least. I was eight, and I became a
social reformer too.

We were anarchists. We believed that all people

should be equal, and that nobody should possess

more than anybody else ; and we hoped for the

* Mr. and Mrs. William Michael Rossetti.
t Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

2 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

social revolution. We had one big red banner in
common, and we three little ones had a smaller one
of the same colour for our special use. They both
had some words on them, cut out of silver paper and
pasted on with glue. I don't remember the words,
but they were mottoes of some kind. The banners
looked very bright and expensive, especially in the
open air.

We had an anarchist page-boy. He was the son
of my aunt's French cook. He had red hair and a
cross, spotty face, and he used to open the door in
the afternoon when visitors came. When he wasn't
sitting in the hall he was supposed to be helping his
mother in the kitchen, peeling potatoes and cleaning
boots. But he never seemed to do much work.
He disliked work because it tired him so. When he
was in the kitchen he used to sit by the table with
his arms spread out upon it and eat whatever his
mother put in front of him, and when she would not
give him any more he went into the larder to find
food. He never said what he was going to eat, so
that we were always being disappointed at table
because at the last moment he had eaten something
that was needed in the cooking. At first his mother
used to say it was the cat, but after a time it couldn't
be hidden any longer, because he ate so many things
no cat would ever touch. He sulked when he was

SOCIAL REFORMERS 3

spoken to about it, and grumbled because he had
not been educated to be a public speaker.

He, of course, also thought that everybody should
be equal and possess no more than everybody else.
He said that he, for instance, was a uniformed slave
of the capitalist system. He used to lie on the
dining-room sofa with his legs thrown up over the
back of it and his coat unbuttoned and explain his
views about it. He thought it was a shame that he
was forced to wear a coat with a long row of degrading
buttons up the front as a token of servitude, and
waste his youth on helping his mother who toiled
and sweated in our kitchens while we, the repre-
sentatives of the tyrant classes, wore what we liked
and were provided for.

He said that he was a son of France, and that in
France they had once got up a revolution and
chopped the heads off all the tyrants. Tyrants'
heads rolled off into the basket underneath the
guillotine as quickly as peas out of the shucks into
the basin when his mother shelled them. One day,
he said, the same thing would happen here, and then
** our " turn would come, and he and his mother and
their kind would triumph. Till then they would
be patient and hug their grief in secret. French
people are more excitable and say more serious
things than the English do. We used to sit round

4 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

him on the floor, and hug our knees and listen. We
felt ashamed and apologetic, and it was very difficult
to think of anything to say to comfort him. Of
course, it wasn't our fault, and we longed for the
revolution. It was in our programme. Once my
aunt came in and found him lying on the sofa, and
she grabbed him by the ear and led him straight out of
the room, right to the top of the kitchen stairs. She
said she only kept him for his mother's sake. We
all got up from the floor and stood close together. I
shall never forget how angry we were, and how
terrible our faces looked when she was doing it. It
seemed to come just as a proof of what he was always
saying : how unjust the world was, and how the
tyrants always got the best of it.

We had an anarchist printing press down in the
front room of the basement . We printed an anarchist
newspaper on it. Olive and Arthur wrote most of
the articles themselves. The page always promised
to write something for it, but he never did, because
he said he couldn't find the time. Sometimes they
got an article from a real outside social reformer.
The paper was called The Torch, and we used to sell
it in Hyde Park on Sunday, and on the platforms of
the biggest railway stations. I think it must have
been interesting and uncommon, because whenever
anybody bought a copy they would first stand for

SOCIAL REFORMERS 5

some time staring at the cover, and as soon as they
got to the title of the first article they would to an
absolute certainty (we knew because we used to
watch) turn round suddenly and stare after us. I
can't remember the headings of any of the articles,
but I think there was an incitement to revolution in
every copy. It was probably most about the moans
of the classes trodden under foot, and the bloody
(if it couldn't be done otherwise) repression of
tyrants. That is what we were chiefly interested in
at the time.

My aunt* didn't like the printing press. She was
tall and narrow-shouldered and stooping. She had
a broad, high nose, and a long, rather severe face.
She kept her mouth shut tight except when she was
speaking, and her lips jutted out a little, especially
when she was thinking about something interesting.

She was always moving about very quickly over
the house. She used to sweep into the schoolroom
early in the morning in a brown cloth dressing-gown,
when we were having lessons, and listen for a minute.
Then she would whirl the governess out of her chair
and give us the lessons herself. She knew how to
hit on the parts we knew least. Her voice went very
high and very low, and she explained beautifully.

* Mrs. Rossetti was the eldest daughter of Ford Madox-
Brown.

6 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

Whenever my uncle gave me half-a-crown to spend
she took it away to buy my stockings with. She
loved me, but she thought that children should be
taught to be economical. She was very clever and
used to lecture about the rights of women ; and she
had written several books and painted pictures.
She knew a great deal about education. Sometimes
she whipped her children when they fell down and
hurt themselves, to teach them to be more careful,
but she never did at any other time. In the afternoon
when she was not busy she would nearly always
smile and answer the most difficult questions.

She used to sweep along the streets just as quickly
as she swept about the house. When we went out
with her we used to follow in a tail quite out of
breath.

She said that no one had the right to spend one
idle moment on this globe. If she couldn't write
or teach and lecture she would scrub, or sweep the
streets, or clean drains rather than be idle. She said
work, work, work, was the object of life.

She wore quite old clothes in the street, because
she said it was wrong to spend much money on
clothes. She cut down Olive's dresses for Helen
when Olive had done with them, and cut them still
smaller for Mary when Helen had. She ate up all
the fat and gristly pieces on her plate because she

SOCIAL REFORMERS y

said luxurious habits were detestable, and she made
us eat them too, except Helen, because she was
delicate.

She was very kind to the poor. Once we met a
man in Tottenham Court Road, and he asked her
for a penny to buy some food. She went into a shop
and bought a big white roll for him and a hunk of
cheese. When she came out and gave it to him, he
opened it and said, quite quietly and not angrily at
all, " You might have stood a pat of butter. Madam,"
and she looked at him and went back into the shop
and paid the shopman to cut the roll and spread some
butter on it. Then the man began to eat it at once.
We thought she would have been angry, but she was
not, only thoughtful.

Sometimes she would say, " And now we'll go and
see Christina,"* and we did so.

She was a very kind poetess who lived in one of
a row of houses in Torrington Square and wrote
poems that usually ended sadly. She was very
religious, and sometimes she used to put on a long
black veil and go into a sisterhood to pray. But at
other times she wore a black dress and a white lace
cap, and we used to find her in the back room of her
house with her hands folded, thinking and waiting
for the kettle to boil. But, of course, she did other
* Christina Rossetti.

8 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

things as well. Once she made me a tiny dining-
room table and half a dozen chairs out of chestnuts
and pins and red string, and put them in a little box
and gave them to me and said, " When you look at
them, remember Aunt Christina," and I did.

She had a mild religious face, and smooth hair,
and very big grey eyes, rather prominent. When
we came in she was always glad, and she used to say,
" Welcome, merry little maidens," and made us sit
round the table and have tea, and eat as much as we
wanted. She had a big cupboard with sweets in it,
and a glass tank full of gold-fish, and two very
ancient ugly aunts who lay in beds on the opposite
sides of a room, with a strip of carpet in the middle.

They were so old that they couldn't stand up, and
they could hardly talk. They always seemed to me
to be waving their long skinny hands. They wore
big nightcaps with frills round the edges and flowered
bed-jackets.

They were very fond of children and, after tea, I
used to be sent up for them to look at. They used
to stretch out their hands to me, and I used to stand
on the strip of carpet between them and seem rude
and unwilling to make friends. But it was really
because I was frightened, for they reminded me of the
wolf when he had eaten Red- Riding-Hood's grand-
mother up, and put on her nightcap and got into

SOCIAL REFORMERS Q

bed. They were, in fact, very affectionate, and
wanted to be kind to me. It was only because they
were so old and dried and wrinkled that I was
frightened.

The reason that my aunt disliked the printing
machine was that the day on which the paper went
to press we were all quite black with the part that
comes off on your hands and face, and Olive and
Arthur were hot and irritable. Besides, she said, it
was not right for my uncle, who was employed by
the Government, to have a paper of that kind printed
in his house. When people of importance came to
see my uncle it could be heard quite plainly from
his study, groaning in the basement. But Uncle
WiUiam stood up for us and protected it.

He had a head and face that, joined together, were
an exact oval. His head was perfectly bald and
shiny on the top, but he had a little white tufty
fringe at the back that reached right down to his
collar. He was tall and rather bent, and he wore a
black frock-coat with a turn-down collar, and rather
wide trousers. He had thick white eyebrows and
dark eyes. We loved him almost better than any
one, because he was so gentle and stuck to us through
thick and thin about everything, not only about the
printing press. He always read the articles in the
paper, and he would smile and make suggestions in

lO CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

his kind soft voice. But he always said to us,
** Don't you think so ? " not at all as if he really
knew better than we. Aunt Lucy didn't really keep
the page-boy so much for his mother's sake as that
Uncle William protected him and said he had an
interesting character, and he was going to send him
to the Polytechnic.

II

We three little ones had a special mission of our
own, although it was all part of the same work. It
was the reformation of policemen. Of course, we
understood very well that if we could get them on
our side it would be a very great thing. We felt
nervous when we undertook the work, but Olive
told us that that kind of agitation was quite within
the law until the policemen had actually begun to
rebel against their chiefs. Then, of course, it would
be a case of save yourself whoever can. I think she
looked it up in some sort of Blue Book before we
started. She was always getting worried and looking
things up because she was so anxious that no mistakes
should be made.

What we had to explain to the police was that it
was most unfair to put a man in prison merely for
taking what he needed from another man who had
more than the first man had. There are so many

SOCIAL REFORMERS II

riches in the world that there is no reason why
every man should not have enough for himself, and
if the second man has too much and can't be per-
suaded by kindness to share it with the first man who
hasn't enough, then the first man has every right to
take it from the second by force. The second man
depends entirely upon the armed supporters of the
law, who are the police and military, to aid and abet
him in his greediness, and every right-minded
policeman should feel ashamed to strike a blow in
such a horrid cause. That was our programme in a
nutshell.

We took our banner, the smaller one, with us to
give us confidence, and we arranged it as we went
along. We had simply to hem the police in as they
stood at their corners, so that we could force them
to listen to us. I was to stand in the middle holding
the banner in front of me, and I was to begin the
address.

The policeman nearest to us was at the corner of
Avenue Road in the St. John's Wood Road. We
came down from Primrose Hill in a row, with the
banner flying. We didn't mind the people stopping
to stare after us. We were used to being stared at,
even when we hadn't got the banner with us, because
Aunt Lucy always dressed us in artistic style, and
we were busy listening to Helen explaining to us

12 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

exactly what to do. We took some copies of the
paper with us, but the poHce were not to pay for
them.

Helen really thought that there might be some

chance of our being arrested and dragged off to

prison, but she said we were not to mind because

other people had been through far worse. She said

that the police did really sometimes go beyond their

duty, but that we were in the right, and we ought to

be ready to die if necessary. But in any case, there

was not the slightest danger of our being executed

or anything really serious. She herself wouldn't

have minded being executed in the very least. She

didn't say so, but I'm sure she wouldn't. She was

very brave, although she had a cough, and was so

thin and delicate. Once she cut her finger open and

wrote a document in her own blood, swearing that

when she was dead she would rise from the grave if

it were possible and walk into our bedroom so that

we might really know once for all whether it were

possible for the spirit to exist without the body or

not. Helen thought she was going to die quite soon

because of her weak chest, and other people thought

so too. But she wasn't at all frightened. She said

it was absolutely the only way of finding out for

certain several things she wanted to know. She was

not religious. Once she put Mary's doll out on the

SOCIAL REFORMERS 1 3

bedroom window-sill in the soaking rain, and made
us pray to God to keep it dry as a sign that He really
did exist and was able to do anything He wanted.
When we took it in the morning, you wouldn't have
known it for the same creature. Helen said that it
was a sure sign that there wasn't any God, because if
there had been He would have been only too happy
to have saved our souls by anything so simple.
Mary nearly cried when she saw the sodden shapeless
mass. But she stopped herself because she had
really meant to offer it as a sacrifice. She thought
it meant that there was a God and He had wanted
to punish us for being so presumptuous and un-
certain. Helen did not have dolls, or she would
have used one of her own. We buried her document
behind a loose brick in the old wall at the bottom of
Acacia Road, and whenever we went past she made
a sort of Freemason sign with her finger to show that
she remembered it and was going to keep her vow.

Mary was so frightened by what Helen had said
about the executions that she had nearly begun to
cry before we reached the bottom of St. Edmund's
Terrace, which was quite near the first policeman.
She was afraid we really might be executed by some
mistake. She said that terrible mistakes were made.
Once a poor man was hanged three times and nearly
killed before they found out it wasn't the right man.

14 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

If the rope hadn't broken they'd never have found
out then.

I felt sorry for Mary. She was small and fat and
her face was broad. She often used to get anxious
about things. She liked digging up remains in the
back garden and wondering what they were. Once
she dug up some bones and was certain they belonged
to a victim who had been buried by a murderer, as
you read about it in the paper. She was very
frightened, but Helen said no, they were some
chicken bones abandoned by the cat ; and so they
were. And she dug up a scrap of paper, and was
sure she could see traces of a mysterious message
written on it, but we couldn't see anything. We put
it under the microscope, and there was nothing
written on it at all. But she said she could see it, so
she kept it. When she dug up an old piece of glass
or tin she used to believe they were Roman remains,
because she said she was sure it was the Romans who
had begun to build the waterworks at the foot of
Primrose Hill. She didn't believe it really, but she
wanted to so much that she almost did. She wasn't
very brave, and she used to cry a good deal because
she was always being frightened by the grave things
Helen talked about.

Helen stopped short in the middle of the road and
began to scold her. Her face was quite white with

SOCIAL REFORMERS 1 5

anger. She said, " Coward, coward, coward, only
fit for nursing dolls and hemming pocket handker-
chiefs." She said we must fight, fight, fight. All
the great men and women in the world had lived
fighting and died fighting. If we were afraid of a
perfectly peaceful policeman now where should we
be when the social revolution came ?

She began to cough in the middle, and Mary gave
way at once. Every one gave way to her when she
began to cough, because it made them so sorry for
her. It shook her so and made her look so thin
and ill.

I secretly hoped that the policeman would not be
at his corner. But he was. He had just settled
down in it again after a short walk to and fro. He
wasn't going to move again just then.

He was a very broad and tall policeman with a
large head and fat red cheeks. His eyes were blue
and turned up at the corners. They weren't bright,
but they were very gay and kind.

We stood in a row in front of him just as we had
said we would. I held the banner with one hand
and the papers with the other, so I felt that I was
rooted to the spot. It was a horrid feeling.

I fancy he must have thought us very small,
because he stooped right down with a hand on each
knee to look at us. He smiled right across his face.

1 6 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

He was just like the giant in our picture book when
he stooped down and looked at Jack and was thinking
how glad he was that he was going to eat him.

His face was quite near mine, and I felt sure that
he was going to take a bite out of my cheek. But it
was the banner that attracted him. He was trying
to read what was pasted on it, but I knew he couldn't
because some of the letters were turned the wrong
way round, and they were a good many different
sizes.

He said, " That's a pretty thing you've got there ;
what's writ across it ? "

His voice was a little hoarse as though he used to
have a sore throat rather often. I daresay it was
ruined by standing in the damp. But he himself
was not rough.

I knew what I ought to say, but I couldn't think
of it. It was because of the banner and the papers,
and being rather near. If I could have run across
the road and stood on the other side I could have
explained quite well.

I held up the literature and said, " Would you
read the paper, please ? "

This was stupid, because of course he wouldn't
want to read the paper until he had had it properly
explained to him.

Mary's eyes and mouth were quite wide open, she

SOCIAL REFORMERS 1 7

was SO frightened. Helen couldn't wait any longer.
She was always impatient. She began to help and
she did it beautifully.

First, she pointed out each word on the banner
with her finger and explained exactly what it meant,
and the policeman was interested. Then she flung
the hair back off her shoulder and put her hand on
her hip. She always stood like that when she was
giving explanations. Her face looked very affec-
tionate and truthful, and her voice went up and down
a little, something like Aunt Lucy's. She explained
our whole programme from beginning to end, not
only that part especially for the use of the police.

She said there was no reason why policemen
shouldn't have things just as nice as a king. They
were both human beings. It was only just an
accident that one had been born a king and the other
a policeman. If the other had been born a king and
the one a policeman nobody would ever have noticed
the difference. A policeman was as good as any
king, in fact, better, because he was honest and cheap
and worked for his living, while a king was useless
and expensive, and only kept for showing off.

The policeman hitched up his belt with both his
thumbs and said, "Ah, that's what they call Sociahsm,
that is. What's yours is mine, and what's mine's
my own sort o' business, eh ? "

1 8 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

Helen said, " What is is everybody's," very gravely.

" That'll want a deal o' putting straight, that vv^ill,
if ever that comes in," said the policeman, and he
hitched himself up all round again and stamped both
his feet, first one and then the other. " That'll take
a deal o' thinking of."

" Well, but vs^ill you think about it ? " Helen said.
Her face looked shining and transparent like the face
of the little boy Christ talking to the old Jews in the
picture in the Tate Gallery.

" Ah, but it wants wiser heads than mine to think
about it," said the policeman. " All the thinking I
could do wouldn't make it come no clearer. You
want a lot of learning to understand such things.
People says one thing, and people says another, and
from what I can hear they're all a-contradicting of
'emselves and of each other. I don't take much
notice of it."

" Well, but will you read the paper ? " Helen said.
** You'll find a lot about it there. I am sure it will
be a help to you."

" Will I read the paper ? " he said, " of course I
will." And I gave him one and he took it in his great
podgy hand and wrenched himself round and hoisted
up his coat tails and rammed it down into his trousers
pocket. Then he swung himself straight again, and
bobbed up and down and jerked his knees in and out.

SOCIAL REFORMERS 1 9

and stooped again and touched my face with his first
finger. It felt just as big and heavy as one of those
long leathery sausages we used to have for supper
before the page-boy's mother came.

** I never seen cheeks so red, nor yet eyes so blue,"
he said, *' and what a lot of hair, as soft as silk. I
reckon you don't like havin' that brushed out of a
evenin' ! "

I didn't know what to say. One never does when
people make personal remarks.

" I got a little lass your size," he said, " with hair
that colour, and she makes a rare fuss when her
mother puts it into papers of a evenin'."

Ill

Mary crept into my bed in the night. We had
three beds in a row in the night nursery. She was
quite cold and frightened again. She couldn't
forget the poor man who had been hanged three
times. But she said, " Don't tell Helen because
she'll say * coward, coward, coward,' and I can't
bear it."

She simply worshipped Helen. She used to
stand sometimes for a long time quite still behind her
chair in the schoolroom when she was doing her
lessons in the evening. Sometimes she would stroke
her hair quite gently, and Helen would fling it back

20 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

off her shoulder and flash round and say, "Oh,
bother you ! " and Mary used to say, " I didn't think
you'd feel it," and stand still again. When Helen
wrote the bloody document about beyond the grave
Mary cried because she couldn't bear to think that
Helen might be going to die. Only she always said,
" Don't tell Helen," because Helen would have
scorned her for it.

I tried to comfort her about the man who had been
hanged three times. I said I'd make a poem about
it, and she wouldn't be frightened any more when
she saw it properly explained. The first verse came
at once as soon as I began to think about it,

" Three times, three times was he strung up,
Three times, three times he fell.
The minions of the law were there.
The clergyman as well ..."

I wrote poems about everything that interested me.
I had a whole book full of them. Some were very
sad, and some were cheerful. One began,
" A bloody, bloody King thou wast ! "

It was called " An Ode to King John," but Helen
looked over my shoulder and put in " Or any King,"
in brackets. She was a dreadful enemy of kings.
I wrote the ode after Aunt Lucy read us about how
King John had tried to put out Prince Arthur's eyes
in Shakespeare's play.

SOCIAL REFORMERS 21

When I thought of a new poem in the night I used
to escape from the governess early in the morning
and run down to my aunt's bedroom to tell her about
it. I sat on a chair beside the dressing-table while
she was twisting her hair up, in her petticoat-bodice
in front of the glass. I recited the poem before it
was written down.

Uncle William would be in bed with his nice
white nightcap on and the sheets up to his chin.
He used to raise himself up on his elbow to listen,
and he used to laugh and say, " Bravo, bravo, my
little girl ! "

And Aunt Lucy used to leave go of her hair and
stoop down and kiss me and tell me what she thought
about it. She always said at the end, " Write about
everything that interests you, little dear, and if you
can't write it in poetry, write it in prose."

And I did. I wrote a book of stories besides, and
a play in verse. But it hadn't enough incident in it
to be acted.

IV

On Sundays we used to go to make propaganda in
Hyde Park. Olive and Arthur took charge of the
big banner, and we distributed the little banner and
the literature among ourselves. We used to go by
train and fold the banners up and put them in the

22 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

luggage rack when we got in, and we sold the paper
on the platform till the train came in.

Olive wore a round black astrakhan cap, and a
short black coat with astrakhan on the collar and
sleeves, and a green skirt. She and Arthur both had
auburn hair. Olive's nose was short and her face
was very serious and covered with freckles. So was
Arthur's, but they were more difficult to see on his,
because it nearly always was rather dirty.

Olive was of a worrying nature. She was always
wondering whether we had mislaid one of the
banners, or whether we hadn't given too much
change when we were paid for the literature, or
whether we weren't letting wrong ideas creep into
the programme. She had quite a pucker in her
forehead through always worrying so much. She
said it made it worse because Arthur was no help to
her in practical things. It wasn't that he wasn't
keen, but he was so absent-minded. He used to
forget all sorts of things. He very often forgot to
wash himself and do his hair in the morning, and it
wasn't that he didn't want to, because he didn't
mind in the least when other people washed him.
As a rule, when he was sent up to get clean before
meals he did not come down again until he was
fetched, and then he was still quite cloudy. If any-
body wanted to take him out to lunch or tea, the only

SOCIAL REFORMERS 23

thing for them to do was to wash him themselves very
carefully and keep tight hold of him till they started.

He used to wander off in the most excruciating
moments, just when the paper was going to press,
and go into the day-nursery and make noisy experi-
ments. He liked to fill a tin with gas and close it
and hold it over a flame until the lid flew off with a
tremendous bang, and once he blew his hair and
eyebrows off by an experiment with gunpowder,
which nobody ever knew how he got. Once we
found him standing on the balcony with an experi-
mented-upon umbrella in his hand. He said that
when he jumped it would open and he would descend
into the garden, like a parachutist from a balloon.
But, if it hadn't opened, he would certainly have been
killed. Olive was waiting in agonies in the printing
room for him to finish off his leading article, because,
although he was so unreliable, she didn't feel it was
safe to do anything like that without him.

He had a deep cracked voice, and a big forehead
like his uncle's, the celebrated poet and painter, and
round brown eyes that sometimes looked as bright
as though they had a red light lit behind them.
Sometimes he would stare in such a wild and in-
terested way that you couldn't help looking round
to see if anything was there, though you knew there
could be nothing.

24 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

Once Olive stationed him at Baker Street Station
with a pile of the literature to sell, and when she
came back in an hour to see how he was getting on
she found him striding up and down the platform
and talking to himself with the literature all hanging
floppily over his arm. Of course, he hadn't sold a
single copy. We used to meet him charging down
from the top of Primrose Hill in his black ulster,
with his hat over his eyes, brandishing a book,
talking to himself, and waving his arms about like a
madman. He was always reading. He read at
meals, in the street, and in bed, and in his bath. He
read very serious books, and Uncle William gave him
a special key to the bookcase in the library where all
his most precious ones were kept. He trusted him
entirely, because they were the only things he never
lost. His articles were the best in the paper. Once
an important social reformer* came to the house.
He wore a blue serge suit, and he had a great deal of
fluffy grey hair standing up all round his head, and a
frizzy beard, rather a flushed face, and a beautifully
shaped nose. He stood upon the hearthrug and we
all sat round and gazed at him in adoration. Arthur
was especially introduced to him and he said, " I
congratulate you, young sir, on a particularly clever
piece of writing."

♦ William Morris.

SOCIAL REFORMERS 2$

It was Arthur's article in the last number, and he
asked if he would like to come and give a paper on
the subject in his club at Hammersmith. Arthur
would have agreed, but Aunt Lucy said " No," that
he had still a great deal to learn himself before he
could begin to think of teaching other people.

He and Olive wrote a play in the correct Greek
style, with a Chorus in white robes, waving long grass.
It was acted in the drawing-room, and a great many
people came to see it. We were the Chorus, and
told the people exactly what was going on. Aunt
Lucy made the robes out of butter muslin. She was
the prompter and sat in the wings, but we really
didn't want much prompting for Olive had rehearsed
us all so carefully.

Arthur was a youth who slew a loathsome monster.
Aunt Lucy pulled it in on a thread from the other
wings for him to rush upon. He stood in the middle
of the stage with his foot upon its neck and slew it so
fiercely that all the people were astonished and said
that he would make a splendid actor. But it wasn't
really acting. He simply was so absent-minded that
he imagined that he really was the youth. He was
in butter muslin too, but it was tied in round the
waist. We made his sword out of cardboard and
covered it with gold paper. He had on sandals laced
with gold paper half-way up his legs, and a gold band

26 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

in his hair. He had to let his hair grow long for
some time beforehand, but he was glad because he
hated going to the barber's. Olive was worried for
fear he should split the laces of his sandals in his
emotion, but luckily he didn't. The people in front
said he scowled so savagely that his face looked quite
terrible, and the perspiration poured off him with
excitement. I quite believed it, for I knew how
worked up he used to be when we met him in his
ulster on Primrose Hill.

Our banners were not so noticeable in the Park,
because there were so many others there. There
were some speakers called Iconoclasts, and some
called Socialists, and some called Humanitarians, and
some called Unitarians, and some called Vegetarians ;
and they stood, each under their own banner, giving
explanations. Some of the crowd stood and listened
and groaned and clapped and hissed and asked ques-
tions and made rude remarks, and some just walked
about and took no notice. We planted our banner
down near the Socialists as a meeting-place, and
mixed with the crowd to sell literature and gather
information. Olive told us if ever we met with
anything of interest to jot it down with pencil in our
note-books, and we did. If any one said anjrthing
very wise or noble we handed him a pencil and
asked him for his autograph. I called out " The

SOCIAL REFORMERS 27

Torch,'' " The Torch,'' to attract the people to the
literature, and some mocking boys said it was like a
mouse squeaking in the larder. People turned
round and said, " What a funny little girl ! " and
" Bless her, what has she got there ? " and they
bought the paper just to see. Olive explained hard
all the time she sold the literature. She wasn't
upset at all even when quite a crowd came round her.
She frowned and explained all the harder. They
tried to get her in a corner, asking unfriendly ques-
tions, but she was too clever for them, and besides,
she had looked it all up beforehand, while they
hadn't, and she had a lot of practice on us too.
Arthur generally got lost at once and turned up when
the Park was nearly empty, talking to somebody he
didn't know. But he was not at all confused.

We had a cigar box full of autographs of the
speakers in the Park, and we used to rummage our
fingers in them when we wanted inspiration. Once
there was a very desperate and famous lady* there,
and people said we should never be able to get her
autograph, because she always refused to give it.
But we thought we'd try. Olive went up to ask her
first in case she wanted explanations, but a tall
stooping gentleman in a foreign hat, with his hands
behind his back and hair that flowed and mingled
* Louise MicheL

2S CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

with his beard, whom she was talking to, stepped in
front of her and said that '* Madame " could not be
disturbed.

We gathered round the banner and considered
what to do. Helen said that I ought to be sent
because nobody was likely to take me for a spy. I
went up to the lady and pulled her sleeve, and the
foreign gentleman jumped forward again, and I was
frightened. But she had turned round and seen me
first, and she sat down in a chair behind her and
pulled me up against her and asked me what I
wanted. I told her, and she laughed and said,
" What a rosy little girl ! "

She was very thin, and she was dressed all in black.
Her face had dry grey skin on it, and her hair was
grey, and I thought she must be grey all over, under-
neath her clothes as well. She had thin lips and a
long pointed nose and little eyes. They were very
bright and sharp, but not very kind. I said please
was it really true that she had been in prison ? I
thought that as she was a lady there might be some
mistake. She said it was quite true, and what had
little girls to do with things like that ? I said I was
connected with a paper, and did she mind, and was
she much afraid (when she was put in prison) ? Her
face looked very brave, and she said she was never
afraid, and that she minded nothing, because she

SOCIAL REFORMERS 29

knew that all the while the world was getting better,
and that people would be cleverer and happier. She
stroked my cheek and smiled again and asked me,
did I understand ? And I said, *' Oh, yes, that's
what we think too " — after the Social Revolution.
She asked me what my name was, and I said,
" Poppy," and the foreign gentleman translated it
into French, and she laughed again and said, " That
is quite right ; thus it must be." I said, would she
please be so kind as to give me her autograph, because
my cousins wanted it badly. And she said, " Where
are your cousins ? " and we looked round and we
couldn't see them because they were out of sight
behind the banner. They had promised not to peep,
or I should have been too shy to ask her. She took

my pencil and wrote L M right across the

paper in long thick crooked letters. And I thanked
her very much and said good-bye, and she took my
face between her hands and looked at it and smiled
and said, " Good-bye, nice little girl." And she
looked after me till I had got right back to the banner,
and then I looked round and she waved her hand to
me and smiled again.

CHAPTER II

IN MY grandfather's HOUSE
I

MY grandfather lived in the house next door*
but one to us. He was the celebrated painter,
F. M. B.* He was one of the kindest, gentlest,
handsomest old gentlemen that ever lived. Every-
body loved him. He wore a blue cloth tam-o'-
shanter when he was at work, and in the winter sat
with his legs in a big bag made of fur inside, like those
worn at the North Pole. His cheeks were pink, and
he had blue eyes, and his hair fell straight down on
both sides of his face nearly to the bottom of his ears,
and my grandmother cut it straight and even all the
way round behind. It was wonderfully thick and
pure snow white, and so was his beard. He wasn't
very tall, but his shoulders were broad, and he looked
somehow grand and important. He nearly always
smiled when you looked at him, not an empty smile,
but a kind, understanding one, though his eyes
looked quite sad all the while. His lips jutted out

* Ford Madox-Brown.

I)

Ford Madox- Brown

After a draiving by his daughter^ Mrs. Catherine Hueffer

IN MY grandfather's HOUSE 3 1

when he was thoughtful, something Uke Aunt Lucy's,
and then they looked terribly stern. He usually
wore a shiny top-hat and a black cape, and he used
to take my grandmother's little dog out for a walk on
Primrose Hill. He couldn't walk very fast, because
he had the gout, but the little dog was very old and
couldn't go fast either, so it didn't mind. He would
stop from time to time and look behind to see if it
was coming, and then it used to stop too, and sit down
and look up at him and hang its tongue out and wag
its tail, and they went on again.

Sometimes he smiled a different sort of smile — his
whole face looked as if it were laughing and his eyes
as well. But that was very rarely. Once, when he
was having breakfast with a good many people one
of his letters said that two very important people
were coming to see his last big picture before it left
the house. He looked round the table and said,
" That will mean quite an expenditure on red
carpet."

And then he smiled the second sort of smile. You
felt just as if the sun had come out and begun to
shine and made everything warm all of a sudden
when you didn't expect it. Nobody could help
laughing. I didn't know why he was so amused,
but I knew he was, because he never smiled like that
unless he had heard something really funny.

32 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

When I told Helen she was very much upset.
She kept popping up and down all through morning
preparation time and couldn't do her lessons. At
last she grabbed her tape-measure and ran out of the
schoolroom and down the stairs into the hall, and
she measured the whole distance right from the
bottom of the stairs through the hall and down
the front steps to the edge of the pavement to
see how much red carpet would be needed. She
was very angry. She said it would mean thirteen
yards at least, and it must be five shillings a yard
for a good quality. She couldn't bear to think
that the important persons were going to have
so much money spent upon them. But they got
ill and didn't come after all, and it was a good
thing they didn't, or they might have had a dreadful
surprise prepared for them in the house next door
but one.

My grandfather told stories so well that some
people said he did it better than anybody else in
London, and you never got tired of them because
they were a little different each time. When he told
them in the studio he would walk up and down and
wave his brush or painting-stick, and once at dinner
he began to wave the carving-knife because he
suddenly thought of a story just when he was carving
the joint. There was an artist there, who was so

IN MY grandfather's HOUSE 33

hungry that he couldn't stand it any longer. So he
made up a little verse and recited it aloud :

" When B. carves
Everybody starves."

Then my grandfather remembered and gave him
some meat.

Sometimes he used to be very angry, though not
seriously. When the cook sent up some nice
pudding at dinner which he couldn't eat because of
his gout he used to fly into a passion and bang his
fists on the table and say, " Damn that woman, why
does she always go on cooking things I mustn't
eat ? "

But the next minute he'd forget about it and smile
at us all round the table as much as to say, " Aren't I
silly to make such a fuss about a pudding ? " and as
if he hoped we might all enjoy the pudding, although
he couldn't eat it. He used to be angry too when
he pushed his spectacles up on the top of his head
and lost them. He would look for them all over the
studio, and rummage for them on his great big table,
and thump upon it angrily, because he said the
housemaid must have moved them when she dusted
it. But when I said, " Why, grandpapa, they're up
on top of your head all the time," he used to smile
at once and fetch them down and say, " Why, bless
me, little pigeon, so they are."

34 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

Once a gentleman came to the house to bring my
mother some money from the Queen, because my
father had died too young for her to have a pension
and she was very poor. When my grandfather was
told about it he flew into a frightful rage. We
heard him quite plainly shouting in the studio,
" Where are my boots ? "

And he put his boots on and stumped down to the
drawing-room where the gentleman was waiting,
who was very much alarmed. And when my grand-
father saw how nervous he was he was sorry for
him. He refused to take the money, but opened
the door for him quite politely, and said as he
went out, " Tell Her Majesty my daughter is not a
beggar."

My grandfather always bought our paper — The
Torch — and he agreed with us in almost everything.
He hated tyrants and proud rich people. When we
told him of something that tyrants had been doing
he used to frown and look extremely fierce and say,
" God bless us, the abominable villains ! "

He asked us to tell him about everything, and we
always did. He loved us all exceedingly, but he was
kindest of all to me, because my father hadn't very
long been dead. When I ran in to see him in the
morning he used to say to me, " Little pigeon, little
pigeon, you're looking very paintable to-day," and

IN MY grandfather's HOUSE 35

would let me sit by him in the studio when he was
working.

He had a very large studio with a lot of pictures
on easels in it, and a weak lay-figure with false yellow
hair that was nearly always propped up behind the
door. It had stupid round glass eyes that were
always staring, and no expression at all in its face.
It never stood quite straight because its joints were
loose. The slightest jolt used to make it jump all
over and stand in quite a different position. You
looked at it one moment and its head was straight
and it was looking in front of it with its arms folded
as if it had settled down like that for the day, and
when you turned round again it would be staring
over its shoulder out of the window with one arm
straight down and the other sticking out to one side.
That was because a cart had gone past or some one
had moved about in the room overhead.

At night I used to fly past the studio, because I
knew it was there behind the door ready to move in
a moment, and when I was in the studio I used to
turn round every minute to see what it was doing.
I would not have kept it had I been my grandfather,
but he did because it reminded him of one of his
friends.

He used to paint on top of a kind of square barrel.
It had a big thick screw coming up out of the middle

36 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

of it, and on the top of the screw there was a chair,
and when you turned it round it went up and up till
it seemed to be going right through the ceiling.
My grandfather used to put his tam-o'-shanter on
and climb on to the barrel off a small step-ladder and
ask somebody to wind him up on the chair. That
was when he was painting a very big and high picture.
It stretched right across the longest wall of the
studio and reached nearly to the ceiling. There was
a regiment of soldiers in the picture, and a barge on
a canal with a beautiful dark woman sitting in it,
nursing twins. They were really only one baby, but
when my grandfather had finished painting it in one
arm the woman turned it over and held it in the
other, and then he painted it as a twin.

He would rather have had real twins, but the
proper kind of baby was so difficult to find. He was
very particular. First all the babies came in from
the mews at the corner for him to look at. He was
kind to them, but they did not please him because
they weren't good looking, and their mothers were
hurt and took them back again. We used to stop in
the street and look at the nicely dressed babies in
perambulators, but they were too refined. Then
we went to a baby show in Camden Town, where a
lot of women were sitting round the room on chairs
with babies. Some were screaming and throwing

IN MY grandfather's HOUSE 37

themselves about, but some just looked on and took
no notice. One lady in spectacles was weighing
babies in scales, and the other was writing about
them in a book. She was very pleased to see us, and
she said, " Any of the mothers would be honoured
and delighted." We went round looking at the
babies, and the mothers were anxious and began to
put their caps on straight and smooth their bibs and
pull their dresses up to show how fat their legs were.
But they weren't really very fat, because they were
quite poor babies. But at last we found a very fat
and red one sitting in a corner. It was fatter than
any of the others, because a well-known lady writer
had been kind to it and sent her milkman to its
mother every day, so that it could have as much milk
as it wanted. My grandfather said, " That's a
remarkable baby," and it opened its eyes and mouth
and stared, and the mother screwed up her face and
was pleased and said, "I'm sure you're very kind,"
and jumped the baby up and down. And all the
other mothers stared with their mouths open, but
the babies themselves were not at all interested.

The fat baby came next day in a mail-cart, and it
was so fashionably dressed in white that it pricked
you wherever you touched it because of the starch.
It didn't cry when its mother left it in the studio, and
she said that was the best of cow's milk from the

38 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

first. When she had gone we took off its fashionable
clothes and put them away in the cupboard very
carefully, and we dressed it in a soft little petticoat
with short sleeves and a little round cap that my
mother used to wear when she was a baby. It
turned its head round and opened its mouth and
stared hard all the time, and seemed very much
surprised, but it didn't mind. It was delightfully
soft and slippery. There was a little girl in the
picture too, with long golden hair, stretching up on
tiptoe with her arms up begging her mother for a sip
out of her glass of wine. I was the little girl, and
when I got tired of stretching my arms up for the
wine I had them held up on both sides of me, like
Moses on the mountain when he was too tired to go
on praying any longer.

I used to sit on a footstool beside my grandfather's
chair. He was very high and I was very low, and I
used to draw faces on a piece of paper. But I had
no talent. When the face seemed to me too ugly
that I couldn't stand it any longer I used to look up
and say, " Grandpapa it isn't coming nicely."

And he would look down from his chair and say,
" Isn't it .'' Let me see what's wrong with it."

And he used to wind himself down and take off
his cap and push his spectacles on to the top of his
head, while I stood on tiptoe and handed up the

IN MY grandfather's HOUSE 39

paper for him to make corrections. He used to say,
"Ah, you see, the nose turns up too sharply at the
end," or " Lips don't twist up so tightly into one
another as you've made them here," and he'd take
the pencil and put it all straight in a moment, and
make it quite a handsome, interesting face. I said,
" Thank you, grandpapa, and don't forget that your
spectacles are on top of your head again."

All sorts of odd people used to come to the studio.
Some were models and some were just visitors.
The models were generally very proud of some part
of their bodies. Some praised their shoulders, and
some praised their feet. One lady said she had one
of the most beautiful backs the sun had ever shone
upon. She was most obstinate about it and didn't
wish to go away. She said my grandfather couldn't
help being delighted with her back if only she were
allowed to take her clothes off. But she was not
allowed to. Once an ambassador came to tea with
a little dog under his arm, and said it would only
drink milk with cream in it out of a china saucer.
It was quite true, so that we had to send round to
the dairy for some cream because there wasn't any
in the house, and when Aunt Lucy heard of it she
said that it was criminal extravagance. One ex-
tremely dirty old man with very long hair and a
white beard arrived in a hansom cab. He said

40 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

that once he had washed and been painted as King
Lear, but it didn't really pay him, because beggars
were much more popular. As a matter of fact, he
was not so very poor, but he kept himself dirty
on purpose, in order to look like a beggar. He
said, if the worst came to the worst he could
always earn something as a blind man led by a boy
outside the pits of theatres, though he was not blind
at all.

Once a poetess came to be painted by a long,
nervous artist who was a pupil of my grandfather's.
He wore very big spectacles because he was short-
sighted, and he had a curious squeaky voice. His
beard was not like an ordinary beard, but looked like
separate tufts of hair pasted on all over his chin and
beneath his nose. He was very excitable. Once
when my grandfather was unable to get a suitable
model for Sardanapolus, the artist dragged a barrel
organ all the way home from St. John's Wood
Station with the Italian organ-grinder running
behind him and scolding indignantly, because he
thought he would look so splendid as Sardanapolus
lying on the sofa. The organ-grinder really was the
right type, but he refused. He said that nothing
should induce him to take off his clothes in such a
climate, and that without music no Southerner
could stand it. So he went away and wouldn't come

IN MY grandfather's HOUSE 4I

again. My grandfather said he was sure it was
because the man was frightened and thought we were
all mad.

The poetess* had curly black hair and a hooked
nose, and rather a brown face. She put on a black
velvet dress to be painted in, and held a big bunch
of poppies in her hand. She quarrelled with the
artist, and they made a great noise. She said he
made her face look like a piece of gingerbread, and
that the poppies were like dabs of scarlet flannel, and
he said he had never been spoken to like that in his
life before. They talked so loudly, and were so rude
to one another, that my grandfather began to climb
down from his painting chair to see what it was all
about. And just when he had got up to the picture
and was going to look at it the artist put his face
down on his shoulder and burst into tears. Grand-
papa said, " Be a man now, H., and control yourself,"
and was most kind and patient and tried to make
them friends. But the poetess would not be recon-
ciled. She cast a furious look at him and swept out
of the room and collided with Aunt Lucy, who was
coming up the stairs. Sometimes a crowd of
fashionable people came all together to look at the
pictures, and then my grandfather changed his coat,
and that was called a " Private View."
* Mathilde Blind.

42 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

II

I can't remember my grandmother's* face as
plainly as most people's, though she had only been
dead a short time then. She was very, very kind
and gentle, and when she took me in her arms they
were soft, and a sweet scent came from her shawl ;
not like scent bought at shops, but like that of herbs
and flowers growing in the country. She was so
gentle that whenever she came into a room where
people were quarrelling they stopped and behaved
properly. It was said that when she was a baby
lying in her cradle the ghost of a huntsman came
into the room and picked her up and looked at her
sadly and sighed and put her down again. She
wasn't old and bent at all, but tall and straight, and
her voice was so soft that sometimes you'd hardly
know that she was speaking. She used to move
about the house a great deal like Aunt Lucy, but
more slowly, and her skirts made a pretty sound when
she moved. She often carried a little basket and a
big bunch of keys in her hands. She used to go
right down the stairs to the big storeroom next the
kitchen, and I went in after her and sat down on a
stool and watched her, and she would give me a stick
of chocolate. When she moved from one shelf to
another her dress made the nice sighing sound and
* ]Mrs. Ford Madox-Brown

Mrs. Ford Madox-Brown

J}fter a pencil drawing by Dante Gabriel Rosseiti

IN MY grandfather's HOUSE 43

smelt countrified even among all the cookery things.
She was always taking care of my grandfather and
trying to make people pleased and give them what
they wanted. Once when she was young, and it was
a very cold winter, and many men were out of work
and their little children hungry, she turned her
drawing-room into a soup-kitchen and made soup
for them and fed them. She was quite poor then,
and had to go without all sorts of things herself to
get the money. Nothing ever made her angry.
When my grandfather flew into a rage she used to
smile and say, " Ford, Ford," and he was quiet at
once, and began smiling.

When she was ill she was sorry for giving people
trouble and for making them run up and down the
stairs. She used to say to me, " Thank you, little
grand-daughter, and you must forgive me, for, you
see, I'm ill. I shan't be able to get up any more and
go down to the storeroom with you as I used to do."

She used to make me sprinkle breadcrumbs on
her window-sill for the little robin that came and
looked in at her window every morning, and she
said, " One day he'll come and look in like that, and
I shan't be here."

Once in the night, just before she died, when she'd
forgotten all about the world already, she began to
sing a song, but very gently, and my grandfather said

44 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

her voice was just as sweet as when she was a girl
and they used to sing it together.

He was terribly unhappy when she died. He used
to sit alone in the studio for hours together, doing
no work at all. Once when I went in to him he
turned round and looked at me with an odd far-away
expression as if he didn't see me. I was surprised,
and I ran to him and said, " Grandpapa, have you
lost something ? "

And he looked at me and smiled and said, " Oh,
it's little pigeon. Yes, my little pigeon, yes, I have."
He took me in between his knees and held me, and I
climbed on to his lap and put my head on his shoulder,
and we didn't move again till it was nearly dark.

In the evening he used to wander up and down
and in and out from room to room, as if he were
looking everywhere to try and find my grandmother.
One night I heard him coming down the stairs, and
I was frightened because it was night and because
I knew his face would look so sad and strange. I
sHpped into the dining-room and sat down behind
the door. He came in and looked all round the
room, but it was nearly dark and he didn't see me.
Then he went out and into the drawing-room to look
there too, then out again and up the stairs. I
slipped off my chair and crept out into the hall to
look, and when he was half-way up the stairs he

IN MY grandfather's HOUSE 45

Stopped and leant his head down on the bannisters
and his shoulders moved up and down and he was
sobbing. I went into the drawing-room because I
thought there might be some one there. But there
was nobody, and I went out into the hall again.
The big clock in the hall was going tick, tick, as it
always did, and the gas was turned low, and the
beautiful gold paper on the wall looked dim. It was
very still and lonely, and there were big shadows
everywhere. A long way away down the stairs I
could hear the servants laughing and having supper
in the kitchen, but there was no other sound. My
grandfather went on slowly up the stairs, and I went
back into the drawing-room and lay down on the
sofa in the dark and began to cry because I wanted
to see my father and I couldn't, and because my
grandfather was so unhappy, and because of all the
kind dead people who used to be so loving and
protecting. But, however much you want them
and however much you cry, they'll never hear you,
and they'll never come back again.

Ill

The kitchen was at the end of a stone passage at
the foot of a flight of stone steps. I liked to go
there, but I was not really allowed to. I liked it best
of all in the evening when the servants had finished

46 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

supper, and sometimes the cook would let me sit on
a chair in the comer near the stove. She was rather
an ill-tempered cook, though she often used to laugh.
She had been in the family ever since my mother
was quite a little girl. She had a dark yellow face
and brown eyes and black hair. It was quite straight
like tape, and she scraped it back from her forehead
and did it in a funny knob behind. It wasn't black
really, but she used an excellent hair dye, and said,
what did it matter if it came off on the pillow-cases ?
She said nobody need look their age if only they
would take the trouble to look young. But she
didn't look young herself, because she was so bony
and her face so dreadfully wrinkled. She looked
very nice though when she laughed and showed her
false white teeth. They looked whiter than other
people's false teeth, because her face was so yellow
and her eyes so dark. Occasionally she flew into an
awful temper and swore so dreadfully that it shocked
every one who heard her. But at other times she
was quite cheerful and told very funny stories.

She had a treacherous friend who was a hunch-
backed lady. They both loved the same gentleman,
but he couldn't marry them because he had a wife
already. The hunch-backed lady used to come in
the evening and sit down in the kitchen and say how
ill the wife was, and that she couldn't last much

IN MY grandfather's HOUSE 47

longer ; but she did. The hunch-backed lady said
that as soon as she was dead the gentleman they loved
would want to marry the cook, and that he really
loved her much better than his wife. The cook
believed it, and she said if he had only known his
mind when they were young together all the bother
would have been saved.

The hunch-backed lady wore a woolly black cloak,
and a big fur on her shoulders to hide the hunch, a
black velvet bonnet with strings and sparkling jet
ornaments, and an expensive gold watch-chain.
She had a very heavy face with her chin right on her
chest, and light blue eyes and a handsome curly
fringe. She used to drink quantities of tea out of a
saucer, very hot, but the cook said she really liked
whisky much better when she could get it.

Once she ceased coming and the cook went to look
for her, and she found out that the wife had really
been dead all the while, and the hunch-backed lady
had got married to the gentleman they loved. He
didn't want to be married, but she made him. She
was afraid that if the cook had known his wife was
dead she would have made him first.

There was a page-boy in this house too, but not an
anarchist. He wore no buttons, and he had to stop
down in the kitchen and help the cook because of
her " poor leg."

48 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

She got it through going out to buy three pounds
of fish at the fishmonger's and slipping on a piece of
orange-peel outside the door. It used to give way
just at the most awkward moments, and she said she
almost believed it knew and did it on purpose. If
she had a saucepan in her hand, or a piece of toast, or
a leg of mutton, it was all the same — she had to put
it down on the floor and clutch herself round the
knee to pull her leg straight again. Everybody knew
about it, and the first thing they said when they came
into the kitchen was, " Good-morning, cook, and
how's your poor leg ? " and then she told them about
it. When she sat down the boy used to arrange a
chair in front of her for her to rest it on.

He had a fat, red face, and he was always smiling.
The cook said she wouldn't have believed that any
living mouth could stretch so far. It used to make
people angry, because whenever they looked at him
he smiled, even when there was nothing at all to
smile at. My grandfather said he was like the man
in Shakespeare who smiled and was a villain. He
liked eating apples and a sweet-stuff called stick-jaw
that glued his teeth together. The cook said he was
the biggest liar that ever walked the earth. He
always pretended he had a serious illness and he
must go and see the doctor. But instead he went
and played in Regent's Park. Once he tied his face

IN MY grandfather's HOUSE 49

up in a bandage for two days and said that he was
going to the dentist to have a double tooth out.
And he borrowed a huge cart-horse from one of the
stables in the mews and went for a ride on it, without
a saddle, and with an old piece of rope instead of
reins; and that was how he got found out. The
horse insisted on going past the house when it
wanted to return to its stable. He tugged at it as
hard as he could to make it go home round the back
way, but it refused, and the cook was on the area
steps and saw him. She said she wouldn't have
been so certain if he hadn't had an enormous apple
in one hand. When he came next day, he said it
was the dentist's horse, and he had sent him for a
ride on it to get rid of the effects of laughing gas.
But we knew the very stable where it lived, and so
he was dismissed.

The housemaid was Irish, and she couldn't read
or write, but she believed in ghosts. She had been
a long time in the family too, and she was very fat,
with a big pink face and little beady eyes. She was
the kindest person I ever knew. Whenever we liked
anything she had she always wanted to give it to us,
and it really grieved her if we wouldn't have it. She
gave away all her money to the beggars at the garden
gate, and if she heard of any of us being ill or punished
it made her cry, just as if she herself were in trouble.

50 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

She used to fall about a great deal. If there was any
place she could fall into she always did. She said
she had measured her length upon every free space
of ground in the house, and bumped her head on
every stair, and caught her foot in every rug and
carpet. But she didn't let it worry her. One night,
when she was standing on the slippery little knob at
the end of the bannisters to light the gas outside the
studio door, she fell off and lay quite still with her
leg doubled under her until the family had finished
dinner, because she didn't want to disturb them by
calling out. Once she fell into the drawing-room
with a great big tea-tray when there was a tea-party
and alarmed the guests exceedingly. But my grand-
mother was not angry. She said nothing at all, but
helped her to get up and pick the tea-things up
again.

She believed in ghosts most firmly. She said that
her mother had seen so many in Ireland that she
simply took no notice of them. They were in every
room in the house and up and down the stairs.
They used to ring the bells when nothing was wanted
and knock people about when they got in their way,
and whenever anybody died or an5rthing was going
to happen they made a horrible noise outside the
windows in the night. Once, she said, she passed
a woman nursing her own head on a stone by the

IN MY GRANDFATHER S HOUSE 5 1

roadside, and they just looked at one another, but
neither of them spoke.

A gentleman in a nightshirt had hanged himself
from a hook in the middle of the ceiling in the
servants' bedroom, before my grandfather came to
the house, and the housemaid said his spirit haunted
the top storey. She woke up one night and saw a
figure standing in the middle of the room and looking
at her. She knew it was the same gentleman,
because he still wore his nightshirt and had the rope
round his neck, and he was standing just underneath
the place where the hook would have been had it
not been taken down when the ceiling was white-
washed. He was looking at her fixedly. If he had
looked the other way he might have noticed the
cook in the other bed as well, and that would have
been some reUef. But he didn't. He gazed and
gazed as though his heart was going to break. She
was so frightened that she shook the bed with
trembling ; and she shut her eyes and put her hand
under the pillow and got out her rosary, and said five
" Hail Mary's." And when she opened them again
he was still there, only not quite so solid. After
another five he had got so misty that she could see
the furniture through him, and after the third five
he had disappeared. But she was so terrified, she
said, that she didn't get a wink of sleep that night,

52 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

and when she woke in the morning her nightdress
and the sheets were quite damp with terror.

The cook didn't believe it. She said it was pure
popery. She was sure no ghost could possibly come
in in the night like that without her noticing it,
because she was such a light sleeper. But as a
matter of fact, she snored so dreadfully that my
grandfather once asked a builder for an estimate for
padding the walls of the servants' room all round so
that she couldn't be heard on the floor underneath,
but she was so offended that it wasn't padded.

They sometimes used to laugh at the housemaid
in the kitchen for being a Catholic. But she didn't
care. She stuck to her reUgion. She was so certain
that the Virgin Mary was taking care of her, or she
would have been worse hurt in the dreadful accidents
she used to have. She said no living being could
have stood it without Divine protection. When she
was doing something that she thought really might
be dangerous, she just said, " Jesus, Mary, Joseph,
help 1 " and took more care, and nothing happened.

The cook said why she didn't like Catholics was
because she thought they were wicked for burning
the Protestants alive on posts in the streets in the
olden days when there were no police. I said that
the Protestants burnt the Catholics first, but she was
offended. She said that no Protestant would ever

IN MY grandfather's HOUSE 53

have thought of such a thing if it hadn't been put
into their heads by bad example. They argued so
angrily about which burnt the other first that the
housemaid put her apron over her head and sat down
on a chair and began to cry aloud like the Irish do at
funerals. But then she left off and went upstairs to
do her work, and she tumbled about so badly in the
bedroom over the studio that my grandfather got
down from his painting chair to go upstairs and see
what the matter was, and when he found out why
she was crying he was very angry. He stumped
right downstairs to the top of the kitchen flight with
his spectacles on top of his head, his palette in one
hand and his paint-brush in the other. It was
difficult for him to get downstairs because of his
gout. But he did, and put his head over the
bannisters and forbade the subject ever again to be
mentioned in the kitchen. And it was not, and they
were quite good friends again after that.

The person who most hated Catholics was Mrs.
Hall, the wife of the most pious cabman in the mews
at the corner. She was the beautiful woman who
sat in the barge and nursed the healthy baby that had
been painted as twins. She was so beautiful that it
was quite remarkable. Her hair was jet black, and
when one day she sat down in a chair in the kitchen
and let it down for us to see it trailed upon the floor.

54 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

Her eyes were dark blue and extremely big and
bright, but the doctor said that the brightness was
unnatural, and that later she might go blind. She
was very tall, and wherever she stood she used to
look strong and composed and like the statues that
stand round on pedestals in museums. Her husband
used to say God punished her for her sins by not
giving her a baby.

The husband went to a chapel where any one who
liked could get up and preach, and the others were
obliged to listen. He preached every time he got a
chance, and he said he never felt inclined to stop.
He loved his fellow creatures so much that he felt
compelled to save their souls. He always carried a
bundle of tracts about in his pocket, and when any
one paid him his fare he gave them some free of
charge in exchange. My grandfather used to say to
him, " It's no good, Hall, Fm past all redemption,"
because he didn't want the tracts, but Mr. Hall
stuffed a bundle into the pocket of his overcoat while
he was helping him to get out of the cab. Mrs. Hall
said that he wrestled with God for his soul in private.
They were allowed to do that at his chapel.

He was so religious that he thought both Catholics
and Protestants were wicked. He said the mistake
that everybody made was to think there was more
than one door open into Heaven. He said, " Is

IN MY grandfather's HOUSE 55

there more than one door open into Heaven ? No !
And why is there not more than one door open into
Heaven ? Because if there was more than one door
open into Heaven there would be a draught in
Heaven. And would the Lord tolerate a draught in
Heaven ? No ! " That was part of one of his
sermons. It really meant that it was only the door
of his chapel that led into Heaven, and that other
people hadn't got a chance.

Some people said he was a handsome man, but I
didn't think so. He was small and his hair was such
a bright yellow that it looked as if it had been painted.
He had strawberry-coloured cheeks and his nose was
deadly white. Whenever he met a very nice young
girl he used to take her to a prayer-meeting, because
he loved her soul. He knew a great many. His
wife was angry because he took so much trouble
about their souls, and the more he loved them the
more she hated them. She used to cry and tell the
cook which particular one he was saving then, and
the cook used to say, " The saucy hussy ! Pd save
*er, and 'im too ! "

Mrs. Hall cried a lot too, because she hadn't got a
baby.

Once when she had been sitting to my grandfather
and nursing the baby that had been made into twins
for the picture she came into the kitchen, put her

56 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

head down on the side table where all the dirty
dishes were, and cried so bitterly that her shoulders
kept heaving up and down, and part of her hair
came undone. She said, " It's the feel of it in your
arms and then having to give it up again ! "

She meant the nice warm wriggly feeling the baby
had when we undressed it, because it was so fashion-
able. I had noticed it too. She said, "If only I'd
had one like that I might have kept him."

And the cook said, " Was he out again last night,
then ? "

And she nodded her head and began to cry worse
than before.

The cook was very angry. She said he ought to be
ashamed of himself with that nice, beautiful bed and all
that any man ought to feel proud and glad to sleep in.

I thought at first she meant the baby, but it was
the husband they were speaking of. It was true
that he had a beautiful bed, because I once went up
into the room over the stable and saw it. It was all
hung with white muslin and decorated with big blue
bows like a cradle when the baby is a boy. It had a
piece of lavender under each pillow (Mrs. Hall lifted
them up to show me), and " Welcome ! " pasted up
on the canopy in big gold letters. The room was
full of photographs, and they were all of Mr. Hall in
different sizes. There was a big black and white

IN MY GRANDFATHER S HOUSE 57

picture of him over the mantelpiece, and then they
grew smaller and smaller, and the smallest of all was
on a chain round Mrs. Hall's neck.

Mr. Hall used to want to save the parlourmaid too,
but she didn't want to be saved. She objected so
strongly that she said she'd box his ears if he
attempted it. So he gave it up.

She was a very tall girl with a big chest and great
strong arms. She came from the country. Her
skin was something the colour of the paler sort of
olives, and her hair was black. Her eyes were a
peculiar kind of mixture of dark green and red, and
her eyebrows were so thick and dark that they
looked like two straight strips of black velvet above
her eyes. When she was angry she frowned, and
then they joined together and looked like one strip.
Her real name was Amelia Parkes, but in the kitchen
they called her Milly, and when she had once got to
the top of the kitchen stairs she was called Parkes.

She was engaged to marry a horribly cross old
greengrocer who lived in Henry Street. She didn't
want to, but she said she was obliged to in order not
to bring disgrace upon her family. I didn't under-
stand why. She used to cry a great deal about it,
so that her eyes were always swollen, but she never
let anybody see her cry. She did it in the night.

The man she really loved was called Tonmiy

58 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

Haughty. He was the cabman who lived in the last
house but one in the mews. He was a huge and
friendly young man with dimples and the kindest
face imaginable. When we heard a cab come
rumbling up the mews we used to say, " I wonder if
it's Tommy Haughty," and hope it was, because he
always looked so cheerful. When he went past the
house he used to stand up on his box and look down
the area to see if Milly was in the kitchen, and if she
was they used to smile at one another, and then you
saw his dimples quite plainly.

But once he stopped coming past the house any
more. We used to watch for him, but he always
turned his horse the other way and went down
Ormonde Terrace. That was after Milly became
engaged to the greengrocer. She didn't say any-
thing, but whenever we heard a cab come up the
mews she used to turn her back to the window and
stand in front of the dresser quite quietly without
moving. Once the housemaid went into her bed-
room in the night and found her sitting up in bed in
the moonlight with her hair hanging down, crying
bitterly. She put her arms round her and tried to
comfort her, and all Milly said was, " I don't know
how I came to do it."

And the housemaid said, " Do you love the other
so, then, Milly ? "

IN MY GRANDFATHER S HOUSE 59

And she said, " He's been so good to me," and
cried worse than before.

The housemaid told my grandfather about it the
next morning, and he called Milly into the studio
and tried to persuade her not to marry the green-
grocer, but she wouldn't listen. He said it's wrong
and foolish to marry one man when you love another
so badly that you can't sleep for crying. But it had
no effect upon her.

So he and the little dog walked down into Henry
Street to see the greengrocer and ask him to treat
her kindly when they were married. And the old
man made his eyes quite narrow and looked him
straight in the face and said, " What has it to do with
you ? " and my grandfather came back and said he
was a hardened villain.

One night just before Milly was married Tommy
Haughty 's mother came to see her in the kitchen,
and they quarrelled. She was a little, quick, clean
woman, with tiny grey eyes as round as farthings.
Her nose turned straight up out of her face and had
no bridge at all, and it was quite red at the tip. But
she was very tidy.

She said it was all very well to say it was her fault,
but she was a respectable hard-working widow, and
she didn't want her son bringing soiled goods into
their home. She said he was a lad that any mother

6o CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

might well be proud of, and he'd never spoke a
rough word in his life, God bless him, and that
though she said it, he was one that could pick and
choose where he pleased.

Milly was angry. She told her she wanted nothing
to do either with her or her son, and had asked
nothing from them. She said, "I'm going to
marry the old devil to please myself, so set your mind
at rest on that score."

Tommy Haughty 's mother was so excited that she
seemed to keep fizzing up all over her body and
simply couldn't be quiet. She said that some
people didn't know when they had fallen low enough,
and give themselves airs when they ought to be
thankful when a respectable married widow wasn't
too particular to sit in the same room with them.

Milly kept her temper better. She said, " Go
home and tell your son what you've been saying to
me if you're not afraid to."

Tommy Haughty 's mother fell in a violent temper.
She began to talk very loudly, and she said, " I'm
not afraid of my son or of an old man's love-light
either. If the old fool had got any sense he'd pass
you on to the next man willing to take you. And let
me tell you this. My son's glad to be well rid of a
bad bargain. He says it's lucky he's been spared
from taking up another man's leavings."

IN MY grandfather's HOUSE 6l

Then Milly got into a temper too. She stood up
and folded her arms on her chest and pulled her
eyebrows together, and said, " You lie, you old
beast. Your son would take me now and thankful,
if I'd let him."

She looked so tall and angry that Tommy Haughty's
mother was afraid. She kept staring at her with her
tiny little eyes. They looked as if they were trying
to burst out of her head. And Milly said, " Them
as tells lies can't believe them as tells the truth, so
I'll show you that I'm not a liar like you."

And she put her hand into her bodice and took
out a letter and flung it on the table, and said,
" There, that's the letter I had from your son this
morning."

Tommy Haughty's mother left off staring at Milly
and stared at the letter instead. She was awfully
surprised and frightened. She put out her hand to
take it, but Milly jumped at her and said, " No, don't
you touch it. You're not fit to."

And she picked it up and opened it. But then she
stood and looked at it without speaking for such a
long time that we thought she wasn't going to read
it. But at last she did, only not very loudly. It said,
" I love you, Milly, just as I did before. You
haven't been true to me, Milly, but I've been true
to you. If you'll have me now I'll do what's right

62 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

by you. And I'll do what's right by the child that's
coming, Milly. I like the mother and I'll like the
child as well. . . ."

She didn't read any more, but there was some
more. She kept on standing there, and then she
said in a low voice, '* I wouldn't have let you hear
it, only for the things you'd have said about me
afterwards."

She held out the first page of the letter for the
cook to see, so that they'd know she had been reading
what was really written in it, and then she put it back
in her dress again. And she said in the same low
voice, " That's how he treats ' soiled goods.' "

Then she was quiet again, and then she said, " I
know as well as you do that * soiled goods ' aren't fit
for him. Do you think it's your dirty tongue that
stops me ? "

After that they were all quiet for a little time and
Tonrniy Haughty's mother began to fasten up her
bonnet strings, and she said, " Well, I'll be going,"
just as if she'd only come to supper and hadn't been
quarrelling at all. And she went away without
saying good-night to any one.

The next day I saw Milly at the pillar-box near
the house posting a letter. She had on all her nice
white frills and apron-strings, and she looked very
clean and pretty. She kissed the envelope before

IN MY grandfather's HOUSE 63

she put it in the letter-box, and then she stood still.
I ran up to her and said, ** Was it for Tommy
Haughty, Milly ? "

And she said, " Yes, Miss Poppy."

We took hands and walked back towards the
house, and I said, " That was why you kissed it,
wasn't it, Milly } " and she didn't answer for a
minute, and then she said, " Yes, Miss Poppy."

And I said, " Wouldn't you rather marry Tommy
Haughty than that horrid dirty old greengrocer,
Milly ? "

Then she was silent for such a long time that I
thought she wasn't going to answer, but she did and
said, " Yes, Miss Poppy."

And after a minute she turned her face away and
began to cry and wipe her eyes, and that was the only
time that anybody saw her crying in the daytime.

The kitchen was really pleasantest of all in the
evening when they were resting after supper. Some-
times there were quite a lot of people there. The
charwoman used to unscrew her wooden leg and
lean it up against her chair. She said you couldn't
think what a relief it gave her. But, of course, if
she'd had to get up suddenly for anything before
she'd had the time to screw it on again she would
certainly have fallen. The cook had her leg up on
the chair in front of her and they talked about them

64 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

But the charwoman talked most. She was a middle-
sized woman with greasy greeny-greyish hair, and
there always seemed to be perspiration on her face.
She talked whatever she was doing. She talked so
much that people could never understand how she
got through all the work she did. At first it was
disturbing, Hke rain pattering on a roof, but after a
time you wouldn't notice it.

She said that her husband and her husband's
mother and her husband's father had all got wooden
legs. She said that it was fate, and when the doctor
in the hospital had told her that her right must go
it was hardly any shock to her. She had a little girl
called Sarah, and whenever she had anything the
matter with her the first thing she always did with
her was to test her legs at once. Even if it was only
a cold or something wrong at quite another end of
her body she always did. The housemaid said that
it was tempting Providence to talk like that, but she
didn't care.

She talked most of all with Mrs. Catlin, the woman
who did fine needlework and used to make my
grandfather's shirts. She was a caretaker in one of
the great big houses in Ormonde Terrace, and she
used to look so young and innocent that everybody
called her the " little woman," when she wasn't
there. When she had finished some work she used

IN MY grandfather's HOUSE 65

to bring it round in the evening after her babies were
in bed, and then she'd stand near the dresser and
talk, but she never sat down round the table with
the others. She was rather plump and she always
looked pink and clean as though she'd come straight
out of a bath. She had nice fluffy fair hair and blue
eyes, and her nose turned up just a little at the end,
but gently and not suddenly like Tommy Haughty 's
mother's. She talked a good deal too, but she had
a pretty tinkling voice. She said when you'd been
shut up in a great big barracks of a place the whole
day long you simply must let loose or burst. Some-
times she and the charwoman talked both at once
for a long time. They seemed not to hear at all what
the other said, but it made no difference. Cook
said it was like pandemonium in a hailstorm when
those two got together.

The little woman liked to talk about her husband
in the lunatic asylum. He had been there three
years and she went to see him every week and took
him something tasty in a basket. He didn't know
her, and it used to make her cry. She said it was
like being married to a motherless infant. She
thought that lunatics were most peculiar people.
She said that one who lived in the asylum where her
husband was got up the chimney and was pulled
down by the leg, and flung his arms around the

66 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

nurse's neck, and then walked round the room
turning all the pictures with their faces to the wall.
She told a very sad story about a poor man who had
been sent for to clean the windows of the asylum,
and when he looked through into the room he could
see his own wife sitting melancholy-mad in an arm-
chair. The tears rolled down his face when he saw
her, and he might have fallen off the ladder, and if he
had there would have been a whole family of little
children left fatherless ; but he didn't. The woman
used to sit all day long in an armchair, staring at the
fire and taking no notice of anything, and when
anybody spoke to her she used to look up and say,
" Eh ? Oh, yes," and then go on staring at the fire
again. When they brought her little new baby to
see her she just stroked its cheek and smiled, but
she didn't know who it was and wouldn't make
friends, and just looked at the fire again. But at
last, one day, she suddenly noticed the nurse making
a bed, and all of a sudden she got up and said, " Oh,
nurse, how lazy of me to be sitting here doing
nothing and you with all that work to do." And she
helped her make the bed and went on doing lots of
other work, and the doctors said she was cured, and
she went home to her husband and children. The
little woman cried when she told the story, and said
it was the thought of them blessed innocents in

IN MY grandfather's HOUSE 67

their mother's arms again. She was very tender-
hearted.

The cook used to say to her, " And how's the
poHceman, Mrs. CatHn ? "

And she used to blush and say, " Now, cook, don't,
now ! "

I knew the policeman they meant. He was a big
and handsome policeman, and I saw him handing
parcels to her down the area in Ormonde Terrace.
She looked like a clean, rosy apple in a coal-scuttle,
in the bottom of the big, dark area.

One night when they were teasing her because
the policeman was so loving she nearly cried and
said, " Well, now, can you blame me, now ? He's
that kind to my children, and it's that lonely in that
great big gloomy barracks of a night "

And then suddenly she stopped short as if she
oughtn't to have said it, and looked ashamed, and
nobody spoke till the cook said, " Well, Mrs. Catlin,
so it's come to that then ! "

And Mrs. Hall was offended, but I didn't know
why. But the others laughed and the little woman
held her head down.

Then the husband died and she married the
policeman, and not long afterwards she came to see
us all dressed in black crepe and with a nice new
baby in her arms. She cried a great deal about her

68 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

husband, but she adored the baby. It really
belonged to the policeman, but I didn't ask where
he had kept it up till then.

IV

Not long after that something so terrible happened
that I think I shall never forget it as long as I live.
My dear grandfather died. He had only been ill a
few days, and his illness began on the very night he
finished the big picture. There was a nurse in
uniform in the house and doctors drove up to the
door in carriages. They wouldn't let me see him,
though I begged to be allowed to, and the nurse said
that he probably would not know me. But I could
not believe that, I was sure she said it only because
she didn't want to let me in. I used to wait outside
the door because I thought I might be able to slip
in when she wasn't looking, and I felt certain that if
once he only saw me there he would never let them
turn me out again. But one night when the nurse
went downstairs for something I slipped up the
stairs to his bedroom door. I listened for a moment
outside, but I could hear nothing. Then I turned
the handle very gently and went in.

He was lying in the bed and there was a lamp
burning on the table near him. He lay so still that
at first I thought it must be a stranger there, and I

Ford Madox- Brown, on his death-bed

" Drawn by candle-light with an aching heart "

By Frederick Shields

IN MY grandfather's HOUSE 69

was afraid and felt inclined to run away. But then
I saw his hand twitch slightly and I wasn't afraid
any longer.

I crept up to the bed and looked at him. I didn't
wish to wake him, but I was so eager to see him.
He was lying on his back with the clothes right up
to his chin, and his beard was spread out over the
sheet. His hands were folded on his chest.

His face looked intensely proud and lonely. It
seemed to have changed somehow, and to be made
of some cold and hard material, with deep new lines
carved all over it. His white hair was spread out on
the pillow and, as I looked at him, I remembered the
picture of a great, stern snow-mountain lying all
alone that he had once shown me.

I was going to creep away again because I was
afraid of waking him, but all of a sudden he turned
his head towards me and opened his eyes and looked
at me. It startled me, because he did it so quickly
and quietly and I didn't expect it. But I was glad,
and I said, " Grandpapa."

But he went on looking at me as though he didn't
see me, and he didn't smile. And suddenly he said
quite quietly, " I'm sorry, I don't know you," just
as coldly and politely as if I had been a grown-up
visitor come to look at the pictures, and he turned
his head away.

70 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

But I said, " Grandpapa," again. I felt I was
going to cry, but I didn't, and he turned round and
smiled just a little and said, *' Ah, little pigeon."

But then he turned his head away and forgot again.

I stood quite still. I felt dreadfully unhappy.
It was the first time in my life that he hadn't seemed
glad to see me. I felt that it would kill me if he
didn't say one kind, loving word to me. It was
terribly lonely. The wind was howling outside, but
it was quite quiet inside the room.

Then my grandfather said, without turning his
head, " The Guy Fawkes boys were making just
such a noise outside the windows as they're doing
now on the night when your brother Oliver died."

And then he began to say,

" Please to remember
The fifth of November ..."

And then he laughed a little, very low, a peculiar
dreadful laugh, as if he didn't know that he was
laughing. And I said, " Grandpapa, my Oliver
isn't dead at all. It was your own boy Oliver who
died on Guy Fawkes' night."

I felt again that I was going to cry, because he was
making such a strange mistake and because he
laughed like that. I knew it was his own boy who
died on Guy Fawkes' night because my mother had
often told me the story.

IN MY GRANDFATHER S HOUSE 71

He had loved his son OUver so intensely that he
had never forgotten him for a moment since his
death. It made it all the worse because he would
not believe at first that his boy was ill and said that
he was lazy. And after he was dead they found a
number of medicine bottles in his cupboard, and
discovered that he had been trying to cure himself
alone. But it was no use.

My grandfather kept all the pictures he had
painted and all the books he liked to read in a little
room next his own, and it was called " Oliver's
room." He had the key in his pocket, and he used
to go in all alone and touch the things and look at
them. Sometimes he took my hand and let me go
in with him.

When they were going to bury his boy and all the
carriages were waiting, he called my mother and my
grandmother to him and forbade them to shed a
single tear. He said, " This is the funeral of my
son and not a puppet-show."

And they were so frightened because he looked so
stern and dreadful that they dared not cry, and my
grandmother trembled so that my mother had to
put her arm round her to hold her up. And he
walked downstairs to where all the people were
waiting with his head straight up as if he cared
nothing. But it was really because, if he had heard

72 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

01iver*s mother crying at his grave it would have
sent him mad.

But it was all so long ago I thought perhaps he
had forgotten, and I said, " Grandpapa, don't you
remember that it was your own boy who died on
Guy Fawkes' night ? "

And then he turned his face right round again and
looked at me. And this time he smiled his own old
smile, but the one that made his eyes look sad, and
his face seemed somehow to melt a little and turn
into soft, rosy flesh again. And he said, " My own
boy ? "

And he kept on looking at me and smiling kindly

just as he used to do when I said something that

pleased him very much. And I felt very happy. I

was just going to say, " Grandpapa, do you feel well

now ? " when all of a sudden his face seemed to die

away and grow hard again, and he turned his head

away and forgot. And I could hear him saying

very low,

" Please to remember
The fifth of November ..."

And then he went to sleep and didn't move again.
I waited a little, and then I crept out of the room and
went downstairs and cried because he had not really
been glad to see me.

And one night, a little while after that, the doctor

Oliver Madox-Brown

(on the night after his death)

After a draining by Ford Madox-Bronvn

IN MY GRANDFATHER S HOUSE 73

was sent for and people kept running up and down
the stairs and everybody looked frightened. The
cook was sitting in the hall crying because some
newspaper reporters kept ringing at the bell to know
if F. M. B. had passed away yet, and one of them
offered her five shillings secretly if she would tell
him before the others.

My grandfather was dead. Next day when I went
out I saw on the placards, " Death of F. M. B.," and
I stood and stared at them. I didn't cry because I
couldn't believe that the dead man was really my
dear grandpapa, who had always been there in the
studio winding himself up and down in the screw-
chair, and calling me " little pigeon," and loving me.
It seemed to me somehow that even the newspaper
boards would pity me and say something kind to me
if it were really he, and not look so dead and hard as
if they cared nothing for either of us.

But when I went back again, and the studio was
empty, and the screw-chair was turned round to the
ladder just as he had left it when he last climbed down,
and his cap and spectacles were lying on the table
where he had put them that night when my mother
helped him upstairs to bed because he was so tired,
and he had said to her, " Well, my dear, my work's
done now " — ^then I cried.

CHAPTER III
I

THE CONVENT

SOON after my grandfather was dead I went
to school in a convent. I had some relations
who were Roman Catholics, and they were very
pious. They were so religious that they believed
that every child who wasn't baptised in the proper
way would go to hell and burn for all eternity when
it was dead. They didn't wish me to be burnt like
that, although they really didn't know me very well.
They thought I might have a chance of being properly
baptised and going to heaven if I went to school in a
convent. And so I did.

It was a big red building with a number of windows
and a green square in front of it. It had an arched
door like a church door with a nicely polished brass
plate in the middle with the name of the convent on
it in black letters. The bell hung down at the side
on a chain, and just above the brass plate there was
a little square grating with a tiny window behind it.
When anybody rang the bell a nun opened the

THE CONVENT 75

window and looked through the grating to see if it
was a respectable person ringing. If it was, she
opened the door ; but if it was a person who didn't
look respectable, like a thief or somebody with a bad
character, she went to ask permission before she let
them in.

Inside the door was a wide corridor with a tiled
floor and windows on both sides, and on the right a
big door that opened into the chapel. The corridor
led into other corridors, and large class-rooms opened
out of them on either side filled with desks and maps
and pictures. Upstairs there were more corridors
with tiny bedrooms for the boarders opening out of
them. In each room there was a crucifix over the
bed and a shell full of holy water. When the nun
came to wake you in the morning she stood by the
bed and held out the shell of holy water, and (if you
weren't a heretic) you were supposed to dip your
fingers into the water and make the sign of the cross
to show that you were thoroughly awake. If you
were a heretic, she simply said " Good morning."
When you got out of bed another nun came in and
brushed and combed your hair. That part was the
same whether you were a heretic or not, but if you
weren't you went into the chapel to hear mass as soon
as you'd finished breakfast.

The chapel was very pretty with a quantity of blue

76 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

and gold paint about it. There was a statue of the
Virgin Mary on the right-hand side of the ahar, and
she was in blue and gold as well. She had a pink-
and- white looking face, and her eyes were made of
glass, like a doll's. She wore a blue dress and a gold
crown in her hair and held a dear, loving little baby
in her arms, with a blue frock and gold hair. She
appeared to take no notice of it, but stared straight
in front of her with her eyebrows lifted as if she were
extremely surprised at something. St. Joseph, her
husband, was standing on the other side of the altar
in a handsome blue gown all covered over with
golden stars, and held a golden crook in his hand.
His eyes were brown, and he didn't look so surprised
as the Virgin Mary — only dogged. There were
some other saints round the sides of the chapel, but
they weren't nearly so well dressed.

Over the altar there was a beautiful portrait of
Mary Magdalene, who was wicked once but got
better later on. She had on a blue dress too, and
her hair was golden, but not tidily kept like the
Virgin Mary's. It fell down all round her right to
her feet and looked as bright as if it had just been
washed and combed out. Her face was pale and
sad and lovely. I liked her better than the Virgin
Mary. I thought she looked as if she had a much
better character. But, of course, she hadn't. She

THE CONVENT 77

was very bad until she was converted, and then she
tied her hair up and was sorry for her sins.

There was a big crucifix in the chapel, and a long
picture of the twelve apostles all standing in a row
with their feet in sandals and on clouds. They had
brown dresses on and ropes round their waists, and
gold halos on the back of their heads to show how
saintly they were. Their faces were nearly all
painted alike, except for hair- dressing, because there
were no pictures or photographs in those days to go
by, but if you wanted to know which was which you
looked at their names, which were written in gold
letters underneath the clouds.

There were a lot of big, expensive candles on the
altar to show respect to God, and down near the
altar rails there was a sort of upright candelabra with
spikes all over it for sticking smaller candles on. A
pile of candles lay near. Some cost a halfpenny, and
some cost a penny, and there was a money-box on a
little table for you to put the money in to pay for
them. (It's the same in all Catholic churches,
because it is thought that candles are so much
appreciated in heaven.) You light a candle and
stick it on the candelabra with a special prayer to the
Virgin Mary or one of the saints for something you
really want. You light a halfpenny candle if it's
an easy thing and a penny one if you feel you're

jS CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

going rather far. It's a little more expensive, but
it's worth it. The Virgin Mary sometimes grants a
request for nothing, but she's much more likely to do
it if you light a candle. So are the saints. It's a
special way to please them.

In the middle of the altar was a kind of little
square house called the Tabernacle in which the
Sacred Host was kept. It was extremely holy.
Everybody who passed it had to bend the knee in
adoration, and the sacristan kept it nicely dusted
with a feather brush.

On the right hand of the chapel near the sacristy
door was a big, upright box like an open wardrobe,
with an arch on the top and curtains across the
front and a little place behind curtains to kneel on
at either side. That was the confessional. Catholics
go to confession and get their sins forgiven about
once a week, generally on Saturday night, so that
they won't have time to commit any more sins
(especially if they go to bed at once) before seven
o'clock on Sunday morning when they go to com-
munion. The safest time to sin is on Friday and on
Saturday morning and afternoon and early on
Saturday evening, so that there is not so much
chance of dying and going to hell between the
sinning and going to confession.

The priest sits in the middle of the confessional

THE CONVENT 79

behind the curtains and forgives sins quite easily,
and when he has forgiven them God does. But if
you die in mortal sin before the priest forgives you,
you go to hell and burn for all eternity, and when
you're once there no power on earth can ever get you
out again. Hell is a great burning pit full of flames
and red-hot cinders where the devils live. They
are used to the heat and go about their business just
as usual, but Catholics who die in mortal sin and go
there never get to like it. That's their punishment.
Mortal sin is a sin that's really dreadful, such as
coming late to mass on Sunday, eating meat on
Friday, or murdering your father and mother.
There's another kind of sin that's not so bad, called
venial sin, such as cheating or fighting or being
unkind to one another. If you die in that sort of
sin you go to purgatory.

Purgatory is not so frightful as hell because it's
not kept so hot, and if you are patient there and don't
complain your sins are forgiven after some time, and
you go to heaven just as usual. But, of course, it's
pleasanter and shorter to go to confession just before
you die, so that you don't have time to go wrong
again.

There's another way of keeping out of purgatory
in advance, but you must be able to count well to do
it. It's by saying special sort of prayers called

8o CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

" indulgenced prayers." Every time you say them
some of the purgatory that you've been letting your-
self in for is knocked off. Some knock off forty days,
some sixty and some more, so that if you can say
them quickly enough you can get rid of a year in no
time. But, of course, you must keep count as you
go along or it's pure waste of prayers, and it's very
difficult to count properly unless you're used to it.
The best thing is to have a pencil and a piece of
paper in front of you while you pray and jot it down,
though some people are very clever at counting on
their fingers. There are some quite special prayers
that knock off all purgatory at one blow. They are
much longer than the others, but I always thought
they saved time in the end, and they are much safer.
There's another place called " Limbo," kept at
quite a mild temperature, where the souls of the
people who died before Our Lord came to save the
world are detained. They long to go to heaven but
they can't, however good they've been, because they
lived before the forgiveness of sins was established.
If they went straight to heaven there would be no
knowing whose sins had been forgiven and whose
had not, and it would cause great confusion, so they
have to wait till the last day, when every one will get
what they deserve. It's very sad, but it can't be
helped.

THE CONVENT 8 1

Hell, purgatory and limbo, seem to be like three
separate compartments — hot, hotter and hottest —
with the lids on, and they all want looking after. It
sounds puzzling until youVe learnt about it in the
catechism, but it is really quite simple, and with the
grace of God all will come right in the end. On the
last day, when the deafening trumpet has been
sounded, purgatory and limbo will both be emptied
and the people in them will be admitted into heaven ;
but hell will go on for ever and ever to satisfy the
wrath of God.

When I first went to the convent I hadn't been
baptised at all, not even in an improper way, and
every one was sorry for me, as if I had measles or
some bad illness.

The nuns used to say, " Don't you know that you
are not the child of God ? " or, " Don't you think it
would be dreadful if you died in the night and
suddenly found yourself in a pit of awful fire ? "

I said, yes, I did think it would be dreadful. And
so I did. But at the same time I didn't want to be
baptised because no one had ever before told me
that it would be so good for me. I was so obstinate
that one of the nuns who was very kind-hearted used
nearly to begin to cry whenever she looked at me,
and she couldn't sleep at night for praying that I
might be converted. I thought it very kind of her,

82 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

because she was no relation. The girls used to tell
me too that I should go to hell, but I didn't care at
all for what they said. They were not severely
dressed in black and white with long rosaries round
their waists as the nuns were. The thing was that
I didn't really believe in hell. I thought if it was
true it would have been in all the papers and I
should have heard about it somehow. But I some-
times used to feel uncomfortable and think it might
be better to be on the safe side.

The person who talked to me about it most of all
was Reverend Mother, and I was more frightened
of her than of anybody else. She always seemed so
much grander and more important than any of the
other nuns. The black part of her dress seemed
blacker, and the white part whiter, and her rosary
heavier and longer than theirs, but that was only
because she was the Reverend Mother. She was
very big and broad, and her skirts waved to and fro so
that they almost touched the walls on each side of
the corridor as she walked along. Her face was
light brown and quite square, like a piece of card-
board, and her eyes were round and dark and bright.
The mouth was so long that the ends of it seemed to
get lost in each side of her coif, and her teeth were
big and yellow. Everybody was afraid of her,
because she was so holy and had such a deep loud

THE CONVENT 83

voice. When she came into the class-rooms to
listen to the lessons the girls trembled. Sometimes
she used to interrupt and ask a question herself,
but it was nearly always one of three questions : first,
the sons and character of William the Conqueror ;
second, a list of the seven capital sins or vices and
their contrary virtues ; and third, the French for
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. When she prayed
she looked so severe I thought the saints must feel
alarmed.

One day she sent for me into her private room
where she received visitors and scared naughty girls
and invented punishments. She was sitting in her
great armchair waiting for me. I stood in front of
her, but I was afraid to look at her face, so I looked
at her hands. They were lying in her lap with
black mittens on. They looked immensely strong
and heavy.

She said she had sent for me because she had
something to say to me — did I understand ? And I
said, " Yes, Reverend Mother."

And then she asked whether I had made up my
mind to become one of God's children by being
received by baptism into the Catholic church.

I was dreadfully frightened, but I hadn't made up
my mind, so I said, " No, Reverend Mother."

Then she said, did I know that God couldn't

84 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

possibly love me until I had been baptised, and I
said, " Yes, Reverend Mother."

She said, did I want to remain for ever an outcast
from the community of the blessed, and I was just
going to say, " Yes, Reverend Mother," but I thought
perhaps that wasn't the right answer, and I said,
" No, Reverend Mother," and that was right.

Then she told me she had had a vision. She said
she had seen the souls of two little children before
the judgment seat of God. One soul was white as
snow, but the other had a large ugly stain on it as
black as ink. That was because it had never been
cleansed by baptism. The little white soul was let
into heaven, and God and all the saints and angels
rejoiced, but the little black soul was cast forth into
hell, and God and all the saints and angels were full
of sorrow.

That was the end of the story. I thought it was
a foolish story. The child with the black soul
couldn't help that it had not been baptised, and God
could surely just for once have let the little soul into
heaven if He was really grieved about it. But I
didn't dare to say so. I said nothing at all, but my
face grew hot and I stared at the floor and twisted
my fingers together and looked sulky and stupid.
Then Reverend Mother said, would nothing ever
touch my heart, and had I got nothing to say to

THE CONVENT 85

her ? I daren't go on being silent as if I wasn't
interested, but my head went round and I could
think of nothing to say. Then I remembered some-
thing just in time. I asked was there a kitchen
stove in hell }

Reverend Mother looked surprised and shocked.
She said no cooking would be done in hell, at least
no cooking of food ; that the souls of the damned
would hunger and thirst for ever.

I said I didn't mean that ; but there had been
a big kitchen stove in the kitchen of my grand-
father's house, and I had once tripped up and fallen
with my hands straight on it when it was nearly
red-hot.

That was true, and I had never forgotten how
terribly it had burnt my hands and what awful
blisters I had had. When I told Reverend Mother
about it I remembered how kind my grandfather
had been when I showed him my hands, and how he
had loved me. I was afraid I was going to cry, but
I didn't want her to see. I was so sinful that I
nearly hated her.

She said she didn't know about a kitchen stove in
hell, but that each of the damned would certainly
find there the thing that he most feared and hated.
That was part of the plan.

Then she told me to go and think over all that she

86 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

had said. She hoped that if nothing else could
influence me the fear of hell might lead me to the
love of God. My eyes were so full of tears that I
could hardly see my way to the door, but I got out
of the room without her noticing it. When I was
outside in the corridor I put my arm up against the
wall and hid my face and cried, because I wanted so
much to see my grandfather. I knew he would have
comforted me and said that all she had told me was
not true. Then I heard some soft footsteps and a
rustling sound near me, and when I looked up I saw
some nuns coming in procession from the refectory.
They looked wonderfully clean and saintly, and they
moved so quietly and smoothly that you could hardly
hear them.

When they saw me crying they stopped and came
round me and tried to comfort me. They said, what
a silly little girl to cry when so many of God's greatest
blessings were within her reach. There were so
many little girls who had not the great chances I had
of being called to grace. One of the nuns, the one
I loved best of all, called Sister L., held my hand
and took me to a window seat and sat down and
asked me what was the matter. I said I had been
with Reverend Mother and she put her arm round
me and drew me up against her, although the nuns
were forbidden ever to kiss or embrace the children,

THE CONVENT By

and she said, " God loves all little children. He has
made them Himself so helpless and innocent."

Her dress and veil felt soft and holy. When they
touched me it was like being [caressed by something
pure and tender. I was so wicked that I felt ashamed
to stand so near her. I was afraid that if everything
religious people said was true she might be sent to
hell for saying that God loved all children, even if
they weren't CathoHcs.

I said, "I'm not frightened, but I hate her."

And she said, " Oh, hush ! " and got up and
glided away down the corridor so silently that I
couldn't hear her move at all. She didn't once look
back, and I knew it was because she was so shocked
that I could be wicked enough to hate Reverend
Mother ; and I began to cry again.

I continued to be wicked. I didn't love God and
I didn't believe in hell. I was quite sure that if my
grandfather had been told about children being
burnt in hell he would have said that it was nonsense
and that I needn't believe it.

But one day I tumbled into a puddle in the play-
ground and was sent down to dry my clothes in front
of the kitchen fire. I had never been in the kitchen
before. It was a big kitchen with a stove in it larger
than any stove I had ever seen. There were great
iron bars across the front of it and the fire was

88 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

blazing and roaring behind them. The middle bar
was quite red-hot and, as I stood there, the heat
scorched my face and hands. I thought how
terribly it would hurt to have one's hands tied down
on to that red-hot bar so that one could never get
them off again. It made me feel quite faint to think
about it, and then I remembered that if it were true
about hell, hell might be just like that stove with fire
blazing and roaring, and that all the people who
weren't Catholics might go there and be tied on to
red-hot bars. Suddenly I thought, what if it's true ?
and I was frightened. I was so frightened that I
determined to be a Catholic straight away. I nearly
ran straight to Reverend Mother's room to tell her
so, but I was afraid of that as well. So I stopped in
front of the fire and kept saying to myself, '^ It isn't
true." But in the night I woke up and remembered
the stove and I was terrified again, and next morning
I told the nuns that I wanted to be baptised and they
were very glad. They seemed just as happy and
excited as if somebody had given them a beautiful
present. They smiled at me and congratulated me
and held a service in the chapel to thank God for my
conversion. Everybody looked bright and cheerful
the whole day long, and all were kind and affectionate
and said special prayers for me. We had an extra
hour for recreation that evening, and Reverend

THE CONVENT 89

Mother came to us in the middle of it and brought
me a nice new prayer-book and a pretty picture-card
of the Holy Ghost descending upon the Apostles.
She said she would thank God night and day for
having listened to her prayers and touched my heart
and converted me. But it wasn't really God who
had converted me. It was the kitchen stove.

II

I AM BAPTISED

Not long after I was converted I was received into
the Catholic church. But I needed a great deal of
instruction first, because my soul was so utterly dark.
I began by learning the catechism.

The catechism says that everybody is responsible
for Adam's sin of greediness when he ate the apple
which the Lord specially wanted kept. Adam
didn't really care so very much for apples, but his
wife tempted him to eat it. We all bear the stain of
his guilt upon our souls, because he was the first man
created, and it's his fault that there are so many
people on the earth to sin against the Lord, because
he would go on having so many children and grand-
children. The Blessed Virgin is the only person
who isn't blamed for Adam's sin, because she really
had nothing to do with it. When I heard about it I
was very glad I was going to be baptised and have

90 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

my sins forgiven because, I thought, what with my
own sins and what with Adam's things would be very
difficult for me, and I needed all the grace I could
possibly get. I was afraid at first that I shouldn't
be able to believe about Adam, but then I thought
that if I was going to be a Catholic I'd better get
used to believing things. So I believed.

I liked being baptised. I wore a pretty white
muslin dress with a pale blue sash, and a wreath of
flowers and a lace veil on my head, and white gloves
and shoes and stockings. It suited me beautifully.
I couldn't see myself because no looking-glasses were
allowed in the convent, but when I came down
dressed all the girls wanted to be the first to kiss me,
because they said I looked so sweet.

Everybody gave me presents. Some gave me
prayer-books, and some gave me little statues of the
saints, and some gave me picture-cards. One of the
nuns gave me a rosary blessed by the Pope, and
Reverend Mother gave me an Agnus Dei, a round
piece of wax with the picture of a lamb stamped on it,
sewn up in a bag with strings so that I could hang
it round my neck. Catholics are delighted to get an
Agnus Dei, because it's a most sacred thing, blessed
by the Pope, and when you wear it the devil gets
discouraged about you.

The Pope is a very holy man. He blesses things

THE CONVENT 9 1

for nothing, and he is infaUible. That means that
he cannot err when he is teaching people what to
beHeve and how to please God. He really knows
what he is talking about. And if only people would
not be so obstinate, but would believe everything he
tells them without arguing, they wouldn't slaughter
one another and quarrel about the proper way to be
saved. I found that difficult to believe also when I
first learnt it in the catechism, but then I tried hard
and succeeded.

I was baptised in the Catholic church at the end
of the square not far from the convent. The girls
and nuns walked behind me in procession, and
Reverend Mother walked in front of me, first of all.
She looked very proud and important and folded her
hands in her sleeves, and her dress waved backwards
and forwards across the pavement.

When we got to the church a young priest called
Father A. was waiting to baptise me. I knew him,
because he used to come to the convent in the
morning to say mass in the chapel. He was a good
and holy priest, extremely tall and pale and as thin
and quiet as a shadow. There were deep hollows
under his cheek-bones, and his eyes were sunk so
far back and hidden in such dark shadows that you
could scarcely ever see them distinctly, even in broad
daylight. His lips were always moving in prayer.

92 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

He walked very fast, with long steps, and even in the
street he prayed as he went along, and whenever he
passed the church he stood still on the pavement and
bowed his head and crossed himself, and paid no
attention when rude Httle boys were surprised and
laughed at him. He often stood in front of the
crucifix at the bottom of the church praying with his
head bent down, and if you went near enough you
could see that his shoulders were shaking and tears
were running down his cheeks. That was because
he was so sorry for Christ that He had been scourged
and crucified.

He was thin because he gave nearly all his food to
the poor and ate nothing but dry bread. He gave
away his clothes as well and never wore an overcoat
even in winter, and he slept on the floor because he
had given away his bed. But he was most terribly
severe to sinners, and many people daren't go to
confess to him because he scared them so and gave
them such dreadful penances. He scourged and
tortured himself that he might never forget the pain
our Lord had felt, and soon after I was baptised he
went away to nurse the lepers, because he thought
his life was still too easy and he wanted to see
nothing but pain and misery till he died. He
thought that was the right way to comfort Our Lord
and help Him to forget what He had suflFered.

THE CONVENT 93

When we got into the church he was standing near
the font, waiting, in his cassock. It was as white as
snow and he was praying to himself with his hands
folded in his sleeves and his eyes quite hidden in
shadows. Reverend Mother took off my veil and
wreath, and I went and stood in front of him. I
felt afraid as though I were standing near to God.

He put his hands on my head and blessed me, and
then stood quite still and silent, but I could see that
his lips were moving. His hands were so thin and
light that I could scarcely feel them on my head ;
but they smelled beautiful. He must have washed
them with scented soap to get them clean enough to
touch the holy water with.

He went on praying for a long time, but he made
no sound, and the shadows round his eyes seemed
to get blacker and blacker. The nuns and children
fell on their knees round the font, and it was perfectly
silent. For a moment I felt afraid, but I didn't
move, and all of a sudden he bent down to me and
said, quite low, " Oh, my little child, love Christ.
He bled for you. He died for you. It is in the love
of little ones hke you that He finds comfort."

His voice shook so that I thought he was crying,
and so he was. When I looked up in his face I saw
tears on his cheeks.

Then he sprinkled holy water on my head and

94 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

said the words of baptism that made God free to
love me.

I was glad to be baptised and get my sins forgiven,
but I wished I knew whether my grandfather and all
the people I had loved before had been baptised too.
I thought how dreadful it would be if I went to
heaven and found they were not there. But then I
remembered that if I could approach God, Himself,
one day in heaven when Reverend Mother was not
near I could tell Him what good people they really
were, and beg Him to let them in. If I could once
get near to God I needn't be afraid of Reverend
Mother.

HI

MY FIRST CONFESSION

I needed more special instruction before I made
my first confession. Everybody does ; but I was
given more than others, because I wasn't used to
beUeving things and required so many explanations.
The nuns said that was because I had been so
shockingly brought up.

It says in the catechism that the real way to repent
of your sins when you go to confession is to be sorry
for them only because they have offended God, and
not because you have deserved hell by them. I was
afraid that I shouldn't be able to be sorry in the

THE CONVENT 95

right way when the time came. I used to practise,
but I found it very difficult. I didn't regret offending
God half as much as going to hell. I didn't feel I
knew God very well ; but if I had not had to think
so much about escaping hell I might have been
sorry for offending Him. I had not time enough
for both.

I made my first confession in a black dress and a
black lace veil to a priest in the convent chapel. I
was to have made it to a very kind priest, Father W.,
but he was taken ill with gout and couldn't come.

Father W. was a dear old man, quite different from
Father A., and he had the gout in his feet so badly
that it took him quite a long time to hobble down
the square from the church to the convent, but he
only laughed and said it was a just punishment for
his sins. He had a very handsome, saintly face. It
looked as delicate and fragile as an egg-shell, but it
had a quantity of tiny lines all over it, because he
was very old. He had white hair falling nearly to
his shoulders and golden-brown eyes which looked
at you so kindly that you longed for him to bless you.
Children came running from all sides for him to
bless them when he walked down the square, even
Protestant children.

People said that he had visions. They said that
once a ghostly nun came and sat at the foot of his

96 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

bed and told him what it would be like in heaven.
Sometimes he came into the playground when we
were having recreation and then the smaller children
would run to him and pull him down on to a seat
and climb on his knee or lean against him and say,
" What did the nun tell you about heaven, Father ? "
And he would smile and shake his head and say,
" Little mice mustn't be too fond of gobbling cheese.
Little children mustn't be too fond of asking ques-
tions." And his eyes would grow misty as though
with tears, and he'd say, " The heart of man hath
not conceived the joys God hath prepared for them
that love Him." And he'd put his hands on our
heads and look lovingly at us and say, " God has
prepared a special place for each of His little ones, a
special nest for each of His fledglings."

He was very fond of us. He never told us about
the horrors of hell, but always about the joy of
heaven. When we asked him about hell he always
said, " Never mind about that, my chickens. The
devil is not so black as he's painted." And if we
insisted he would say, " God loves us all. Every
hair of our heads is precious to Him. Can we not
trust ourselves into His keeping ? "

When it was a fine evening and he wanted us to
stay out longer at recreation he used to say to the
nuns, " Let them enjoy themselves. I'll put it

THE CONVENT 97

right with the Blessed Virgin. She and I under-
stand one another." He talked about God and the
saints as though he really knew them. People said
he imposed very easy penances at confession, and
forgave your sins almost before you had finished
confessing them.

One day, about four in the afternoon, Reverend
Mother came into the refectory when we were having
tea and said the priest had come to hear my con-
fession. I felt dreadfully nervous. I put on my
black veil and fetched my prayer-book. Reverend
Mother took my hand, and we went into the chapel.
There was no one there at all, but there was a dim
light over everything and a smell of incense, and a
still and holy feeling.

Reverend Mother told me to go and kneel at the
prie-Dieu near the confessional, and prepare myself
for confession, and I went on tip-toe and knelt there.
My knees were trembling so I feared I should
topple over. I tried to pray, but my head was
giddy and I didn't know what I was saying. Reverend
Mother was kneeling in a seat two or three rows
behind me, and that made it all the worse. Then I
heard the chapel door open, and the priest walked
up the chapel and squeezed himself into the con-
fessional and pulled the curtain across the front of it.
I knew he'd have to squeeze himself in because he

9$ CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

was SO fat. He had a heavy, greasy face and a large
Roman nose that always seemed to jut up in the air,
and his cheeks were so puffy that his eyes looked like
little slits above them. He was new at the church
and hadn't spoken to any of us yet.

You take about a quarter of an hour to prepare
yourself for confession. That gives you about five
minutes to remember your sins and ten minutes
to be sorry for them ; or you can do it the other
way round if you like. I had examined my con-
science the night before in bed, and had learnt my
sins by heart, so I had an extra five minutes for
repenting.

I kept repeating, " Oh, my God, I am sorry for
my sins, and not because I fear the pains of hell,"
but I knew quite well it was not true. I really was
not very sorry, and I did fear the pains of hell, very
much indeed. My heart began to beat harder
because I was so anxious. I knew that time was
passing, and that if I did not repent quickly I should
not make a good confession. I continued saying to
God, " I am sorry," but every minute I grew more and
more afraid knowing that I should soon be obliged
to rise and go into the confessional. I thought that
when I stood up I should certainly fall, because my
legs felt so weak. At last I gave up trying to repent
and felt nothing but fear. Then Reverend Mother

THE CONVENT 99

came up behind and touched me on the shoulder and
I nearly screamed, because she had moved so quietly
that I thought it was a ghost.

She said, " It's time."

And I got up and nearly tumbled through the
curtain into the confessional.

At first it seemed quite dark inside. There was a
wire grating between me and the priest, and I could
only just see a mass of something white behind it.
At first I didn't know what it was and I was afraid
to go near, but then it moved and I could see that
it was the priest's cassock.

I knelt down on the stool and stared through the
grating. I felt that if I were to take my eyes away
for one moment the white thing would jump out and
seize me. I was shaking all over and the wooden
stool seemed to cut into my knees, but I dug my
finger-nails into the ledge in front of me and tried to
keep still.

The white thing moved again and the priest
turned round to my side of the confessional. I
could see a big pale lump where his face was, and I
felt that his tiny eyes were staring in my direction.
I dug my finger-nails still harder into the wooden
ledge. If only he had said something it would have
been better ; but he didn't. He was waiting for me
to begin.

100 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

I said the first part of the " confiteor " almost
unconsciously.

It's a long prayer you say at confession to remind
God and the Virgin Mary and St. Michael the
Archangel and John the Baptist and the Blessed
Apostles Peter and Paul, and several of the other
saints, that you are going to confess, so that they
may get ready to listen. When you come to the
middle you stop to get breath and name your sins.

I was so nervous that I could only feel my lips
moving and didn't know in the least what I was
saying. But I had learnt it so carefully by heart,
and practised it so often, that I got through it without
any mistakes and struck my breast properly three
times when I came to " through my fault, through
my fault, through my most grievous fault."

I was very pleased that I had managed it so well.
I almost forgot to name my sins, because I was so
pleased and surprised. But then I remembered and
did.

When I had counted them up on my fingers the
night before they came to four ; but now, of course,
I had to add about not loving God and not being
sorry for my sins, and that made six.

Some were bad ones, such as being unbelieving.
That's one of the worst sins. I didn't believe about
the devil's climbing over the fence into the Garden

THE CONVENT lOI

of Eden, and disguising himself as a serpent and
making all the trouble about the apple. I thought
it more likely that Eve wanted the apple from the
very beginning and invented the story about the
serpent in order to put the blame on the devil. He
had such a bad character already that anything
would have been believed against him. I didn't
believe either about the whale's being seasick and
casting up Jonah on to dry land all tidily dressed as
though nothing had happened as he appears in
Bible pictures. I didn't believe that all the animals
walked into the ark two and two, and behaved
properly when Noah explained to them about the
flood. I was sure some of them would have
quarrelled.

Those were really three sins, but I put them all
together and called them heresy. Then there was
frivolity y because I had laughed one morning during
mass when the boy who was serving slipped down
the altar steps and sat on the floor. Then there was
gluttony^ because I had sucked an acid-drop one
morning during the catechism lesson. It made
rather few sins, but I couldn't think of any more. I
hadn't stolen anything or told lies or been rude to
any one. I wished I had, because I was afraid that
perhaps the priest might think it hadn't been worth
while to come on purpose to forgive so few sins. It

102 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

seemed like sending things to the wash when they're
not properly dirty. But as the sins of heresy and
impenitence were really bad I thought perhaps it
would be all right.

I confessed sins of heresy and frivolity and
gluttony, and then I said that I didn't really love
God and that I wasn't properly sorry for my sins,
and the priest was dreadfully startled. I knew he
was because I heard him wriggle all over and he
said, quite sharply, " Eh ? "

I told him again, and he said that impenitence was
the most deadly of all sins, and that without penitence
no absolution could be given.

I felt very distressed because I had come on
purpose to get absolution, and I didn't know what
to say. And he said, " Doesn't the fear of ever-
lasting hell lead you to repent your sins and vices ? "

I said, yes, but I didn't think that was sufficient ;
and he said, by heart, out of the catechism, " Sorrow
for sins because by them we have lost heaven and
deserved hell is sufficient when we go to confession.
Don't you learn your catechism ? "

I said, yes, but I had got it confused somehow. I
was very relieved, and I thought how stupid I had
been wasting so much time in trying to be sorry
because I had offended God when I really need not
have bothered. It made things so much easier.

THE CONVENT 103

He took no notice about my not loving God, and
he said, " Have you no more sins to confess ? " I
didn't wish to seem proud, so I said there might be,
but I couldn't remember them at the moment. And
then he said, " Had I been guilty of pride, covetous-
ness, or lust ? "

I wasn't quite sure what they meant, though I had
had ipost sins properly explained. (I was very
stupid at understanding about rehgious things.) I
thought it might sound like boasting if I said, no,
so I said, " Yes, Father."

And he said, " Rage or slander ? "

And I said, " Yes, Father."

And he said, " Presumption, sloth, malice, or
avarice, parsimony, the desires of the flesh } "

And I said, " Yes, Father."

He said the sins just as though he were counting
them up on his fingers, and not at all in an interested
manner or as though he really cared whether I had
committed them or not.

I had no notion what the last two meant, but I
thought that I might have been guilty of them
without knowing it, and that I had better have them
all forgiven while I had a chance. (One can't be too
careful.)

Then the priest gave me a lecture. It sounded as
though it were said by heart, but it was not, really.

104 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

He made it up as he went along. He explained why
we had to avoid each of those sins and why they
offended God. There were so many that it took
him quite a long time, and I couldn't understand
many of the words he used. I tried to at first, but
he talked so quickly and indistinctly that at last I
gave up trying and began to think of other things.

I was delighted that the worst part of the con-
fession was over. I felt inclined to jump for joy.
The rest was quite easy. I only had to finish the
last half of the " confiteor," and I knew I shouldn't
make a mistake in that.

When the priest had finished lecturing he said,
" Say for your penance, my child, five Our Father's
and five Hail Mary's, and may God's blessing be
with you."

I thought it was a very easy penance for all the
sins he thought I'd been committing ; but I didn't
say so. I just said, " Thank you. Father," and got
up and came out of the confessional.

Having your sins forgiven makes you feel clean
and fresh, as you do after a bath. When I had
finished saying my penance I happened to glance
up at the picture of St. Mary Magdalene, and I loved
her for looking at me so gently. The chapel was
pretty and peaceful in the soft light, and it seemed
to me as though the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph and

THE CONVENT IO5

the Baby and all the other saints in the chapel were
stretching their arms out to me, glad that I was
happy. I felt I loved them too, I was ready to love
everybody in the world, because I was so reHeved
that my first confession was over. And then I
remembered that it was really God who had been so
kind to me all the time, and that I was wicked and
ungrateful not to love Him too. I began to love
Him at once. I loved Him so much that I cried and
hid my face on the top of the prie-Dieu. I was
afraid lest I should make a noise, and I stuffed my
handkerchief into my mouth and bit it to keep myself
quiet. When I once loved God it was easy to be
sorry for having offended Him, and I was. I thought
I could never be wicked again, because He had been
so merciful and because I need no longer dread my
first confession drawing nearer and nearer. The
more I loved Him the more I cried, till Reverend
Mother came up and touched me on the shoulder
and said, " Come, my child."

I wiped my eyes and followed her out of the chapel,
and when we were outside she stopped and patted
my head and said, " Good little penitent ! I was
praying all the time that you should be enabled to
make a good confession. I can see that God has
heard my prayer."

But it wasn't her prayers. It was because I had

I06 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

been so wicked and God had forgiven me as soon as
I asked and did not intend to punish me, and because
my hateful first confession was over at last.

I hardly spoke to any one all the rest of that day
because I felt so grave. But I was very happy.

IV

CONVENT LIFE

I Stayed for two years in the convent, and the
longer I stayed the happier I was. I loved the nuns
because they were kind and gentle, and however
naughty we were they forgave us as soon as we
asked them to and forgot our naughtiness. I liked
the girls too, and they were fond of me. We thought
it wrong to feel angry or unforgiving to anybody.
When we quarrelled we made peace again as soon as
possible, and if we could not do it ourselves, the
nuns would help us. They told us we must always
forgive any one who offended us because we wished
God to forgive us. And we did. There were some
Protestants among us, and we forgave them too, and
tried not to think ourselves any better than they were.

The convent was divided into two parts. One
part was called the " Middle School." That was for
girls who were not the daughters of ladies and
gentlemen as we were, but only the daughters of men

THE CONVENT I07

and women. Their fathers were for the most part
tradesmen or shopkeepers. They came and went at
different doors. Their playground was at the side
of ours, but there was a path with trees between us.
We could see them and we knew them quite well by
sight, but we were not supposed to, and if we met
them in the street we never said, *' How do you do ? "
but looked the other way as though we hadn't seen
them. That was because they were not so well born
as we were and didn't pay so much for their education.
But we knew that they went to heaven just the same.

Soon after I was converted we had a new Reverend
Mother. She was very old. Her face was yellow
and wrinkled, but she was much kinder than the
first one. She was always nodding her head and
smiling, like the little china men and women who
sit in the shop windows with their heads on balancing
screws. When she was told of any of us being naughty
she used to nod her head and smile and wrinkle up
her eyes and say, " Oh, dear, dear ! but I'm sure
she will do better now."

And, of course, we said we would.

Every week, on Saturday morning, we assembled
in the big hall and Reverend Mother and three of
the nuns sat at a table at one end of it and gave out
conduct tickets.

There were three kinds of conduct tickets. One

I08 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

was pale blue (the Blessed Virgin's colour) and
marked *' very good," another was red and marked
" good," and a third was green and marked " in-
different." The nuns said that once there had been
some yellow ones marked " bad," but they went out
of print because they were never required.

Reverend Mother called out the names and smiled
and held out the tickets, and each girl went up and
took her own, and made a bow and came back again
with a red face. When any of us got an " indifferent "
Reverend Mother said, " It's the very last time I'm
going to give you this, now, isn't it ? "

And we always said, " Yes, Reverend Mother."

If we had said, " No, Reverend Mother," she
would have been offended.

We had beautiful grounds at the back of the
convent for recreation. There were a long shady
garden and a tennis lawn and a big asphalt play-
ground. We played cricket and tennis and rounders
and " prisoners," and we were never allowed to sit
down for one minute or to talk together in twos or
threes. That was because, firstly, it was bad for our
health, and secondly, because secret societies which
are abominably wicked and plot against Church and
State are always begun by people sitting and whisper-
ing together in twos and threes. So it's a really bad
habit.

THE CONVENT IO9

When we were at meals or needlework a nun sat
at the head of the table and read to us. The nun
who read most frequently was an Irish nun called
Mother K. She was very clever and quite young.
Her front teeth were prominent and her face was
covered with freckles, and sometimes a little wisp
of bright red hair used to peep out from under her
coif. She was tall and stooped a little, and her green
eyes had a kind, mild expression. When they
looked at you they seemed to grow bright and
affectionate at once. There was nothing interesting
that she could not tell you everything about.

She read to us many very interesting books :
adventures and novels (though she always left out
the part in which the characters made love to one
another. I knew because I'd read most of them
before). She was supposed once a week to read to
us from the lives of the saints, but we begged so hard
to be let off that she very seldom did. It wasn't
that we weren't interested in the saints, but the
religious books sounded unreal after the others. We
often coaxed her not to read at all but to let us ask
her questions, and she would, and sat with her hands
in her lap and her eyes shining and told us wonder-
fully interesting things — about the sea or the stars,
foreign countries or anything we wished. We liked
it much better than the reading.

no CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

Once a fortnight we each wrote an essay and stood
up and read it aloud in class. The essays were
generally successful. We wrote one on Shakespeare,
and said that he was " England's brightest star,'' and
another on Napoleon, and said that he was " a terrible
example to the grasping and ambitious," and another
on Cardinal Newman, and said that he was " beloved
by God, and therefore brought to'light," and so he was.
We also wrote one on the " Ideal Woman," and said
that she must be good-tempered and truthful, and
fond of fair play and babies, and clean in her person,
so as to give a good example to her husband and
children. And the nun in charge said, must she not
be modest and pious and intelligent, so as to bring
up her children as good Catholics in the fear of God ?
We said we supposed so, but we had not thought to
mention it. One girl said she must be obedient,
and another shouted " Bosh ! " so loudly that she
made us all jump and got a bad mark for impoliteness.

After the essay on the ** Ideal Woman " we wrote
one on the " Ideal Man," and the nun was grieved
and shocked because we nearly all paid more attention
to his appearance and hair-dressing than to whether
he was really to be trusted and had a nice character.

I said mine must be dark and clean-shaved with a
square chin and a fearless eye. Most liked ideal
men to be clean-shaved, but some liked wavy auburn

THE CONVENT III

hair and a drooping moustache, and some liked
pointed beards, and one preferred a shaved head Hke
a German officer. They all hated whiskers, and
everybody wanted hair and beards to be carefully
attended to and not ragged. One said that no man
could look really like an aristocrat unless he used a
little brilliantine. One said that no man must smell
of scented soap, but others liked scented soap.

When the nun had listened to everything she said
it was very wrong of us to give a thought to any-
body's personal appearance. What was important
was that a man should be honourable and fearless
and ready to die at the stake for the true religion.
If God had not vouchsafed him the greatest blessing
He can vouchsafe to any man — to be a priest and do
His work in that way — then at least he should console
himself by devoting the whole of his strength and
wisdom to the estabUshment of love and justice and
the maintenance of God's Church on earth.

Once a year we had a literary competition, when
the girls from the four convents of the same order in
London competed to write the best short story.
The best story from each convent was sent to the
central convent to be judged, and the story that was
best of all was put into the library of the central
convent.

We signed the stories with artificial names, and

112 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

Reverend Mother read them aloud to the bigger
girls and the principal nuns. They each voted for
the story they liked best, and the story that got the
most votes was considered the best story.

I was afraid my story would not be the best
because most of the other girls lit candles to Our Lady
or their favourite saints overnight and prayed for
inspiration. But I did not ; and that was really
being guilty of the sin of presumption. But it was
not really because I thought the Blessed Virgin
could not have helped me. I was so excited about
writing the story that I forgot about the candle.

As soon as Reverend Mother began to read the
stories I felt sure mine would be the worst, because
each one she read sounded more clever than the last.
As she went on I was more and more sorry that I had
not lit a candle.

Some of the stories were about virgins who had
pined away, gnawed with despair, and died of disease
in lonely towers rather than renounce the Catholic
faith ; and some about saintly hermits who had been
roasted on hot cinders and scalped and suffocated
and skinned alive, and yet persisted in proclaiming
the true religion although the heathens and Pro-
testants did all they could to stop them.

There was a realistic one about a shipwreck which
ran something like this : " The wind moaned, the

THE CONVENT II3

sea swelled, and the panting ship sank into the
yawning gulf without a struggle, while women's
hearts were wasting in the West."

That was the one I feared most. I thought it so
very pathetic. There was another one about a bird
that sat on a branch outside its nest, singing, singing,
singing to its little ones full of joy, till a false, cold-
hearted cat, that had always pretended to be friendly,
came and ate up the little ones while their mother
fell dead of anguish. That was very well written,
but not so striking as the one about the shipwreck.

Then there was one about an urchin boy who died
of hunger on a rich man's doorstep. But that was
not convincing, because the rich man knew he was
there all the time and could easily have fed him,
but didn't. There were no proper explanations
given.

My story was signed " Nero." It wasn't long,
but it was very full of incident.

It was about an anarchist, who began life as a
page-boy, but was lazy from the first. He would
not stir a finger to help his mother keep his nine
little brothers and sisters, but ate up all the scraps ;
and the older he got the more anarchist he became.
As he grew up he joined all sorts of pernicious
secret societies and signed treacherous proclamations
in his own blood. He tried to make the soldiers and

114 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

policemen defy the Pope and massacre the king and
court, and when they refused he reviled them.

The reason of his wickedness was that he was
really in the hands of the devil (I put that into the
story to make it religious), and whenever he did
anything particularly bad the devil appeared on his
left-hand side and looked over his shoulder in scarlet
and grinned and laughed, " ha-ha ! " (not an honest,
manly laugh, but an artful, mocking snigger), and
his guardian angel appeared on his right hand in
white muslin and wept to see the shocking way in
which he was going on. But he didn't know they
were there, and nothing stopped him.

He grew worse and worse. The story told many
of the sinful things he did. One was that when the
inhabitants of a burning house that had been set on
fire by another anarchist put their heads out of the
window and besought him to help them, he defied
them and refused. He flung up his cloak over his
left shoulder and tossed his head and said, "Burn,
pernicious brood, a fitting holocaust to victorious
anarchy ! " and they did. (They were all aristocrats
of the best sort.)

It took me some time to get the sentence about the
holocaust into shape. Spelling didn't count in that
competition or I should have put another one.

This anarchist went from bad to worse, but

THE CONVENT II5

nothing he ever did succeeded. And when the
other anarchists saw that he was unable to make the
soldiers and policemen revolt and misbehave they
scorned him and refused to be his friends. So he
went on getting poorer and poorer and more and
more lonely and sorrowful, and at last, when he had
no more money and was thoroughly tired of being
wicked, he met a Catholic priest who had also been
an anarchist in his young days, but had been con-
verted. Then the other anarchist was converted
and became a priest too, and they died in one another's
arms.

Some of the girls cried at the description of how
they died, and one of the nuns wiped her eyes. I
didn't like the story much, but I thought the nuns
might because of the conversion of the anarchists.
And they did.

When the votes had been counted up. Reverend
Mother smiled and said, " I congratulate ' Nero '
on having written the best story, and I fully endorse
the verdict of ' Nero's ' companions."

Then everybody except myself began to clap, and
my face grew red and they guessed who " Nero "
was. They gathered round and began to con-
gratulate me. It was not good for me, because it
put me in danger of the sins of pride and arrogance ^
but I offered up three morning masses a week for

Il6 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

the gift of humility^ and after a long time it helped
and I forgot about the competition.

It was a good thing, because there were many
other things for which I wished to offer morning
mass. I needed so many gifts to keep my soul in
good condition. One must be so careful.

I never missed the early mass, though I was often
rather sleepy. The candles were alight on the
altar ; the boy who served was clean — he had not
had time to get soiled — and except for yawning he
behaved beautifully. When he rang the little bells
at the offertory they sounded like silver chimes.

I liked best when Father W. said mass. Father A.
made one feel uneasy. He prayed so fervently and
bowed so low, and looked so grave and ghostly, that
he seemed not to belong to the world at all. He
glided noiselessly about, and his face was white and
intent, as though he were seeing God and listening
to Him. There were so many shadows on it that
when he turned, facing us, he was like a picture of
Death, in long robes and with a frightful grinning
skull for a head. When he spread out his hands
they looked as bony and brittle as chickens' claws.

When it was Father G.'s turn (the priest I had
made my first confession to), he waddled about with
his small eyes turned up to heaven and his fat cheeks
shaking like jellies. He was protrudant in front

THE CONVENT II7

and gabbled off the mass as quickly as though he had
not a moment to waste and was anxious to get home
to breakfast.

But Father W. looked beautiful and saintly in his
golden robes. He wore his spectacles right on the
end of his nose, and he was so stiff that it was difficult
for him to get up and down the altar steps. When
the boy held up the gospel for him to read he
clasped his hands and looked down his nose through
his spectacles and spoke rather indistinctly because
he had lost some of his teeth. But it was in Latin
and we should not have understood in any case, so
it did not matter. The candle-light shone in his
white hair and made a golden mist round his head,
and when he turned round and stretched out his
arms to us to say the " Pax Vobiscum," he looked
full of love and very old and humble.

I liked evening benediction too, when the organ
played and the choir sang. Then I loved God most
of all. The altar was brilliant with flowers and
candles, and the golden spikes round the monstrance
shone like sun rays. People from outside came to
benediction, so that the chapel was often full, and
there was a very solemn, thrilling feeling in it. At
times I used to cry when the litany was sung, and
other girls did also. It was because the music was
so grave and gentle and the lights so bright and the

Il8 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

shadows so quiet. The soprano solo was sung by
Mother R., a German nun with a pecuHarly long
nose, round bright eyes, and a stiff way of holding
her head. She was so agitated when she sang
that her cheeks and part of her nose grew red and
her eyes filled with tears. She had a sweet, sharp
voice like a bird's, and it seemed to dart about the
chapel, in and out the shadows and up into the roof.
The contralto solo was sung by a girl called M. H., a
Protestant. She had a deep rich voice, like black
rolls of velvet, and many people cried during the
litany when she came to, " Lamb of God, which
takest away the sins of the world."

That is the most solemn part of the litany. The
chapel is always very still while it is being sung.
People hold their breath and bow their heads. M.'s
voice trembled when she sang it, as though she were
afraid of something.

When her father heard that she sang in the chapel
he was angry because she was a Protestant. He
forbade her to sing any more and she cried herself
into a fever. Her father came to take her away, and
said that he would have her voice trained that she
might sing at concerts, but she did not wish to. It
was the '* Lamb of God " in the litany that she
liked singing, with the lights and flowers on the altar
and the people kneeling, listening to her. Then her

THE CONVENT II9

father gave way and allowed her to sing again, and
next day when she came out of the chapel she fell on
her knees at Reverend Mother's feet in the corridor
outside, and said, " I want to be a Catholic ! I want
to be a nun ! "

And Reverend Mother said, " You cannot go
against your father's wishes."

M. fell into hysterics and the doctor was sent for.
The same night her father came and took her home.
But she ran away from home back to the convent and
declared she would kill herself if she was taken away
again. So she was allowed to stay and she sang in
the chapel more and more beautifully. Whenever
she had sung she used to cry because she was for-
bidden to be a Catholic.

There was another girl in the convent who wished
to be a nun but was not able to. She thought the
world outside so wicked that she could be safe only
in a convent. She was afraid even of going for a
walk. She was very small and weak with a tiny
pointed face like that of a mouse and little round
green eyes. She was old enough to be a nun, but
she could not pass the examinations, and she was too
delicate to stand the hard life and the fasting. But
she always wore a black dress and shaved her head
so as to look as much like a nun as possible. She
did everything she could to grow cleverer and

120 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

Stronger. She passed hours together kneeling by
the ahar rails in the chapel praying for brains and
strength, and often fainted before she could be made
to come away. She would jump up every now and
then to light a fresh candle. She spent all her spare
money on candles, but it did not seem to be of any
use. She remained just as unintelligent and weak.
She constantly went to the doctor to see if there was
any hope, and came back with her eyes red from
crying because he said she was not stronger. Every
time she heard she had failed in an examination she
would lie ill in bed for a whole day crying. The
nuns used to tell her that it was evidently not God's
will that she should be a nun, and that she must try
to serve Him in some other way ; but nothing could
comfort her. She talked of nothing but becoming
a nun, and asked us a hundred times a day whether
we thought she would ever be one. If we said yes,
she would throw her arms round us and kiss us, and
if we said no, she would cry. At last she grew
weaker and weaker and died, partly, it was said, of
fretting.

Nuns lead hard lives and have tiny bedrooms with
no furniture but a crucifix, a little mat near the bed
and a chair and washstand. They are not allowed
to let their hair grow long or to look in the glass, and
they get up very early in the morning in the dark to

THE CONVENT 121

pray while other people are still warm in bed.
Prayers must be said, and if ordinary people are too
lazy to get up and do it religious people have to bear
the consequences.

Nuns fast very often and take nothing but bread
and water, and they refuse especially dainty food in
case they should fall into the sin oi greed. Whatever
they least like to do they must do as often as possible
in order to mortify the flesh ; because the catechism
teaches us that human nature is so bad that whatever
we feel inclined to do is nearly certain to be wrong,
and in the end will lead us to hell.

Nuns are not allowed to grow very much attached
to people because God does not like it and is afraid
they might get to love somebody better than Him.
If a nun shows much affection for the girls or is a
favourite with them she usually disappears and is
sent away to another convent.

Nuns are not allowed to fall into a temper, raise
their voices in anger, or slap one another as ordinary
people do, and so their calling is not popular. The
girls in the convent did not like to sit on a chair
where a nun had been sitting or kneel in a place in
the chapel where a nun had been kneeling for fear
of " catching a vocation ^^^ as though it were measles.
Most nuns are contented with their lives. Some
make rope ladders out of sheets and let themselves

122 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

down through the window and run away ; but most
of them don 't . Mother W . , who taught us catechism,
was a merry nun. One day when the lesson was
upon " Holy Orders," she said that people imagined
that nuns were women who had had some dis-
appointment in love and went into the convent to
cure their sorrow, which was nonsense. She had
become a nun because she liked the life and thought
it was the proper way of serving God. She said that
nuns were for the greater part like her.

I had no wish to become a nun. I was not good
enough, and the older I got the worse I became. I
fought against all sorts of sins and vices, but it was
no good. My soul grew blacker and blacker ; I
could feel it doing it. I was more and more filled
with irreverent curiosity, and I found it more and
more difficult to believe without asking questions.
If you cannot believe without asking questions it
means you lack faith, and if you lack faith you cannot
be a proper child of God. But I could not help
asking questions. When I did so during " religious
instruction," the nuns told me not to interrupt but
to ask questions privately, and when I did that they
usually said that God does not really mean us to
understand much down here, but that everything
would be properly explained after the last day. I
was so impatient that I felt I could not wait until the

THE CONVENT 1 23

last day, which was being guihy of the sin of audacity.
Even when I gave up asking questions I secretly
wondered, and that is nearly as bad, and comes from
want of reverence.

A very pious and learned priest called Monsignor
C. R. used to come to the convent about once a
month to give us special religious instruction, and
then we put our gloves on to show respect and sat in
rows in the big hall to listen to him.

He was so fat that he bulged out of his armchair
on all sides. Wherever there was an opening in the
chair a piece of him protruded. His nose was so
long and heavy that it hung down over his upper lip,
and his upper lip was so long and heavy that it hung
down over his lower lip. His cheeks were fat and
hung down too, and so did his double chin.

He used to sit in the chair with his legs apart and
pant, and try to fold his hands together over his
stomach, but it was so big that he could hardly do
so. He gasped and wheezed between each sentence,
so that it took him a long time to say the simplest
thing, and we dared not move or cease looking
interested.

He used to question us about what we should
answer if heretics made mocking or unfriendly
inquiries about our religion. Every time he asked
a question he raised his eyebrows as high as they

124 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

could go, Opening his smeary little eyes ; and as soon
as somebody began to answer he dropped them
again with a sort of snap, and frowned and thrust his
lips out as much as to say, " I know you're going to
make a mistake."

I used to stare at his big nose^ and thick lips and
fishy eyes, and wonder what they would look like if
I made a blasphemous reply to one of his questions.
I longed so much to do so that I was afraid I might
one day forget myself.

Once he asked us, " What would you answer if a
Protestant were to say to'you : * Why do you reverence
the personal relics of the saints ? ' "

A blasphemous reply came into my head in a
moment. It was : " Because hair and teeth will
always fetch their price."

My grandfather's cook had once said that when
talking of her own false set. I begged God's for-
giveness at once. But blasphemous answers to all
such questions instantly occurred to me. I could
not prevent it, so that I was obliged to keep begging
forgiveness at the time.

Argumentativeness was another of my more serious
sins. Once at evening recreation when it was wet
and we stayed indoors and had general conversation
with Mother W. I began an argument about
anarchists. I insisted that they were not really so

THE CONVENT 1 25

bad as people thought them. I said that once I had
lived with anarchists and that they were very talented
people who wrote plays and talked French better than
many people who were not anarchists.

Mother W. was shocked and said I did not know
what I was saying. She reminded me that I had
pointed out in my own story how terribly wicked it
was to be an anarchist, and I answered that my
anarchist was only so wicked because he was in the
hands of the devil who had been invented by religious
people.

Mother W. was still more shocked and her face
grew red, but the other girls were interested. And
when I saw that I became still more audacious.
Mother W. said that anarchists wished to destroy the
Church, and threw bombs at rich people in order to
steal their money. I replied that anarchists wrote
splendid leading articles and made important speeches
and were extremely particular whom they made
friends with. She said that she had never heard
such things said as I was then saying, and I said that
if she went to Hyde Park on a Sunday she would
hear many clever and noble people saying much
worse, and that I had often been there and asked
them for their autographs.

Then Mother W. was so angry that she could not
sit down any longer. She stood up and said that

126 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

anarchy was a dreadful evil, condemned by the
Church, and that to encourage it and believe in it
was to be in a state of mortal sin. I was angry too,
and blasphemous. I said that being an anarchist
was much healthier and more interesting than being
religious, and that as soon as I had finished my
education I should at once become an anarchist
again.

The girls were still more interested. They stared
and listened in perfect silence.

Mother W. by then could hardly speak. She
walked to the door and opened it, and motioned to
me to go out. When I reached the door ^he told
me to go to my room and think how wrong I had
been. She said she would speak to Reverend
Mother. The girls had begun whispering together.

I went out and up to my room. I opened the
window and leant my elbows on the sill, although it
was raining, and looked out into the quadrangle.
There was nobody there, but the plants were all
bright green and dripping with rain.

I tried to make an " act of contrition," but my
heart was hard and I was unable to do so. I gave
myself to wicked rebellious feelings. I was angry
because Mother W. insisted that all anarchists were
wicked when I knew they were not. I remembered
how happy I had been when I was an anarchist, and

THE CONVENT 1 27

how interesting it was making propaganda in the
Park and instructing policemen. I thought about
my grandfather and wished I could see him. I
knew he would have listened to everything and have
tried to explain, instead of being so positive and
obstinate as Mother W.

I felt utterly desolate and began to cry ; but
just then a lay sister came in with my supper on
a tray, so I pretended to be making signs to some
one in the quadrangle, and laughed, so that she
should not know I had been crying and tell the
other nuns.

It was the lay sister who came to brush my hair in
the morning. I loved her because she was so pretty
and gentle. She had a soft, bright face like a flower,
and blue eyes and little pearly teeth. When she
brushed my hair her hands were so light and tender
that I hardly felt them, and she never tugged at the
tangles.

She did not smile now as she generally did, but
looked serious and put my supper on the table and
told me Reverend Mother had said that I was not to
come down again that night. I pretended not to
care ; but I did. I felt I could not bear to be lonely
like that all the evening. I longed to take hold of
her rosary and tell her I knew that I was wicked and
that I'd try to be better, and ask her not to look so

128 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

grave as if she did not like me. But I was too proud,
and she went out of the room without speaking, and
I began to cry again.

I didn't eat my supper (I was exceedingly
hungry, but I was too proud), and I went to bed
feeling very miserable. It was the first time in my
life that I had gone to bed knowing that some one
was angry with me.

V

I did not go to mass next morning. The lay
sister brought my breakfast into my room and told
me to wait there. At first I thought I should be left
alone again all day, but when mass was finished
Reverend Mother sent for me.

She was waiting for me in the corridor outside the
chapel with her eyes screwed up and her hands
folded in her sleeves. When she saw me she smiled
and nodded her head as usual and said to me, " We
are going for a little walk in the garden."

And we did. We walked side by side down the
gravel path between the trees. Reverend Mother's
head kept on nodding a little as she walked and her
hands were still folded in her sleeves. I knew that
the girls at morning preparation in the big school-
room could see us walking together, and it made me

THE CONVENT 1 29

feel important. It was only when a girl had done
something very bad that Reverend Mother took her
walking in the garden.

She said that Mother Woodward had told her the
night before how strangely I had talked at evening
recreation. She could hardly believe that one of her
girls could have talked like that. If I had been a
wild girl or a heathen who had never known the
blessing of having been admitted to the true religion
she would have understood it, but as it was there
was no excuse. She said, " I am sure you did not
understand the seriousness of what you said."

I said, no, I didn't think it was so serious, and that
lots of people said the same as I had said.

Reverend Mother said, not pious Catholics, and
that when people talked like that it was only because
they had not had the advantages of education and
religious instruction and so had never had a chance
to learn the truth. She said that very often
irreligious words lightly spoken were the cause of
great spiritual trials and temptations, and that, by
speaking carelessly as I had done, I might have been
exposing my companions to spiritual danger. Then
she said, " I am sure you will be more careful in the
future, will you not ? "

And I said, " Yes, Reverend Mother."

Then she smiled and stopped, and turned to look

130 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

at me and said, " It's getting time for you to make
your first communion."

Her face looked very kind and glad when she said
that, as if she thought it ought to make me happy.
I looked down on the ground and said, " Yes,
Reverend Mother."

And when I looked up she was still standing
looking at me, and smiling and nodding her head.
Then she patted me on the shoulder and told me to
run into the house and make my peace with Mother
W., and I said, " Thank you. Reverend Mother "
(we had to), and walked up the path. I could see
the girls in the big classroom bobbing up and down
in their seats to watch me, and when I came near
enough some of them waved their hands to me.
But I took no notice. I went to look for Mother W.

She was watering the plants in the quadrangle.
She had her back to me and didn't see me, and I
went up and stood beside her and said, " Please
forgive me, Mother, for arguing about anarchists, and
please do not be angry with me."

She was very kind. She forgave me at once (nuns
always do) and said, " Well, my child, then let us
forget all about it."

Then she told me to remember that the nuns were
fond of me and thought I did my lessons well, and
looked to me to give a good example to the smaller

THE CONVENT 13I

girls now that I was growing big, and that it would
always pain them if they thought they could not
trust me. She said it showed want of respect to
God and to the nuns to joke about things that were
really very serious.

But I had not been joking.

When I went into the big classroom the girls
turned round and stared at me as if I was something
very interesting, and when the bell rang for classes
they came round to me to ask where I had been the
night before, and what Reverend Mother had been
saying to me. But I did not answer. When the
day girls came the others told them what had
happened during evening recreation, and for a long
time afterwards they used to ask me about my life
among anarchists, and what they were like. But I
did not tell them, because I did not want to grieve
the nuns when they had been so kind to me.

VI

Three of us made our first communion together
during mass in the chapel one morning about two
months after I had spoken about anarchists and been
forgiven.

We had special instruction from a priest for about
a month beforehand in order to make us really fit
for the blessing we were about to receive. In the

132 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

intervals between the instruction we were allowed
special time in the chapel for meditation.

The priest said that when our Lord at the Last
Supper pronounced the words, " This is My body.
This is My blood," over some bread and wine. He
really meant it, and that ever since then Catholic
priests had been able to change bread and wine into
the body and blood of Christ by the power of God
when they said the same words at mass. What we
swallow when we go to communion is not really
flour made up into a wafer (as we should think it was
if we had not been told), but it is the true flesh of
Christ, and as it is so merciful and gracious of Christ
to come down on to the altar and turn into bread and
wine for our benefit, we must be in a special state
of grace to receive Him. He told us other things
besides, but that was what mattered most.

I did not feel glad I was going to make my first
communion. I was afraid I should not make a good
one, and that when the priest put the sacred host on
the tip of my tongue I should not be able to believe
it was our Lord Himself. It did not seem natural.
And if the sacred host really was our Lord Himself,
it did not seem the proper thing to do with it. I did
not believe I ought to swallow it, but the priest said
I ought. Swallowing a person is not the proper way
to show respect even if you are in the highest state

THE CONVENT 13^

of grace. But the priest said it was quite right and
that no mistake had been made.

Even then I did not feel confident about it ; but
that was because I was lacking in faith and had not
been brought up in the true religion from a baby as
the others had. They did not seem to think there
was anything peculiar about it. They thought, in
fact, that it was wrong to make conjectures about
anything one ought to believe; that was because
they had plenty of faith. I longed to argue about it,
but I did not because it would have grieved the nuns
and put my companions into spiritual danger.

I used to stare at the sacred host during mass and
benediction, and wonder if it could be the living
body of our Lord, and if it was, how the priest dared
to fix it into the monstrance and take] it out again as
he did in benediction, and carry it about and lift it
over his head and put it back into the chalice when
he had done with it, and shut it up in the tabernacle
after mass and go away to breakfast as if nothing had
happened. It seemed to me that if the priest really
believed the host was our Lord alive upon the altar
he would be almost afraid to touch it, and ready to
die with joy at being allowed to approach anything
so sweet and sacred, instead of trotting about with it
and gabbling over it hastily as Father G. did when
he said mass. I used to watch Father G. and

134 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

wonder if he really cared in the least for what he
was doing.

Once when I had stayed on in the chapel after
mass for meditation I heard some one snoring in the
sacristy. The door was open, and it could be heard
quite plainly all over the chapel. It was the priest
who had just been saying mass. He had come from
a long distance to do it and had had to get up earlier
than usual. He was very tired and had fallen
asleep.

It made me cry to think that he could be so cold
and thoughtless as to lie there snoring with our
Lord in the tabernacle listening to him. I thought
Christ must be grieved to think that people could be
near Him and forget Him. They should be kneeling
and praying in the chapel day and night if they
really believed that He is in the tabernacle waiting
for them. The more I thought about it the more I
cried, and when I came out of the chapel my eyes
were red and the nuns asked me what was the matter.
But I was obstinate and would not tell them.

When the morning for our first communion came
we were dressed in white muslin and white lace veils
that fell to the bottom of our dresses. (I wore the
same dress I was baptised in, but it had to be let
down all round.) We each carried a clean handker-
chief, a rosary and prayer-book in our hands to show

THE CONVENT 1 35

respect, and when all the nuns and children and
visitors were in their places we walked in procession
up the chapel and knelt down in three prie-Dieu at
the top near the altar rails. I suppose we looked
very impressive, because everybody was so quiet
when we came in.

I felt extremely nervous. Father W. was saying
mass, and as the time drew near for us to rise and
kneel at the altar to take communion I felt more and
more so.

At last the moment came. Reverend Mother
appeared from somewhere and stood beside us and
gave us the signal to rise and we did so. I followed
the other two to the foot of the altar, and we knelt
there in a row and waited for the priest to bring the
host to us.

He turned round and began to move with the
chalice towards us. I longed for him to stop. I felt
I could not remain there and let him put the host
upon my tongue. I should have liked to get up and
run out of the chapel, but I dared not.

I was the last to receive communion. I could see
sideways how the other two clasped their hands and
bowed their heads down on the altar rails when they
had taken the host as they had been taught to do.
They did it perfectly, without the slightest hesitation,
but when my turn came I felt I could hardly breathe

136 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

because my heart was thumping so. I imagined
that when the priest put the host on my tongue it
would suddenly grow heavy and jerk my head down
and make me knock my chin against the altar rails.
When he did put it there I felt nothing at all but
something light and tasteless on my tongue. But I
was so frightened that there seemed to be a mist
before my eyes and a buzzing in my ears, and the
priest appeared to fade away through the mist and
up the altar steps again like a spirit. I forgot what
I had to do. I did not clasp my hands and bow my
head in the right manner, and I did not get up and
follow the others back to the prie-Dieu as we had
rehearsed it. I knelt there till a nun came and
touched me on the shoulder. When I got up the
mist in front of my eyes was so thick and the buzzing
in my ears so loud that I did not know which way
to go, and the nun led me back to the prie-Dieu like
a blind girl. But when I knelt down my eyes grew
suddenly clear again, the noise in my head ceased,
and everything seemed strangely quiet. I could feel
the host on the middle of my tongue, and for a
moment I forgot how it had come there and what I
ought to do with it. Then I remembered that I had
made my first communion, that Christ was with me,
and that I ought to welcome Him. But I did not
feel as though the little lump of melting wafer could

THE CONVENT 1 37

be Christ. Then I remembered that supposing it
really were Christ it might slip down my throat
without my having said a word to Him, and the
chance would be gone. The thought made me so
nervous that I suddenly felt a stiffening in my throat
and my jaws seemed tightly fixed and as rigid as iron.
I thought I was about to choke. I clutched the
prie-Dieu, and my forehead grew wet with perspira-
tion. When I found that nothing happened and
that there was no danger of my choking if I kept my
tongue still and let the host lie quietly on it, I recovered
a little and tried to say the Act of Adoration I had
learnt by heart. But I could not remember it.
The host was slipping right to the back of my tongue,
and all of a sudden I clutched at the prie-Dieu again
with my heart beating wildly and gave a strangled
gulp and the host slipped down my throat. I was
glad that it had gone down safely and that I had not
choked or screamed. As it went it left a flavour in
my mouth like that of the wafers that are eaten with
ices, and when I tasted that I suddenly felt sure it
was not Christ. I felt as certain as if God Himself
had bent down and whispered it to me. I seemed
to wake suddenly out of a dream. I was not
frightened any longer. I was surprised that I had
been so frightened. I looked round me and the
chapel had grown somehow different. It no longer

138 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

seemed holy and mysterious. The priest seemed to
be just an ordinary man reading out of ordinary
books and moving ordinary things about the altar.
It seemed strange for him to be doing it all so
solemnly with so much ceremony. The altar seemed
like an ordinary table and the candles like ordinary
candles with nothing sacred about them. The
statues of the Virgin and St. Joseph seemed to have
turned into great staring dolls. I suddenly felt sure
that it was all a mistake to think there was anything
mysterious about the priest and the things he did at
mass. I longed to speak to somebody of this feeling,
to see if they could understand it too. I could not
imagine why I had never noticed it before. I knelt
there and looked at the priest without attempting to
pray, and when the time came for us to rise and leave
the chapel I was not nervous. I got up and walked
down the aisle looking about me and swinging my
arms, instead of casting down my eyes and clasping
the prayer-book in my hands with the rosary hanging
down as I ought to have done. I did not feel at all
as if anything unusual had been happening to me,
and when the people came to congratulate us I felt
as if they were making an absurd fuss about nothing.
I felt inclined to say to them, " You are making a
mistake. It is not Christ at all. Going to com-
munion is not really wonderful."

THE CONVENT 1 39

But I said nothing. I hardly spoke all day. I
felt as if I had discovered some great truth that I
alone knew and that other people would not be
capable of understanding if I told them.

I woke up in the night and thought about it again,
and it seemed strange to be free not to believe
without trying to force oneself to do so. It was a
great relief — as though a heavy weight had fallen
from my shoulders.

Next day, when I was going from one classroom to
another, I met Reverend Mother and several of the
other nuns walking down the corridor. Reverend
Mother was walking in the middle, because she was
the most important, and there were two or three
nuns on either side of her. Whenever she spoke
they bent their heads towards her to show respect
and made no interruption.

I tried to slip into a classroom, but Reverend
Mother smiled and beckoned to me and I went up
to them. But I did not stand in the middle of the
corridor. I squeezed up to the wall and pressed my
back against it. I felt safer like that and not so shy.

The nuns stopped and stood round me in a circle,
and Reverend Mother said, " Well, my little first
communicant, don't you feel very happy at the
blessing our dear Lord has conferred upon you ? "

I looked down on the ground and pressed harder

140 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

against the wall and made no answer. I was not
frightened. Even the nuns seemed ordinary and
not solemn and mysterious as they had seemed
before I gave up making myself believe things. I
glanced up for a moment at the white parts of their
dresses that had always seemed so pure and stately,
and I thought to myself that they were only made of
the same stuff as collars and cuffs, but in a different
shape, and that their veils and robes were of common
black material that any one could make a dress of.
It seemed to me most strange to have such thoughts
and not to correct them a moment later. I was glad
there was no need to.

It was rude of me not to answer, and Reverend
Mother thought I was shy. She said again, " Did
it not make a most blessed and wonderful impression
on your soul when our Lord came to visit you in
person ? "

At first I thought I would not reply, but then I
was seized with a wicked curiosity to see what the
nuns would look like if I said something blasphemous.
I was standing on one foot with the other bent back
on to the hot- water pipes behind me. I changed on
to the other foot and backed against the wall again
and looked down on the ground and said, *' Not very
much."

But the next minute I peeped up again because I

THE CONVENT I4I

wanted so intensely to see what effect my words
would have.

It seemed as if each of them moved all over with
surprise, and they opened their eyes wider and
looked at me as if they could not take their eyes
from my face.

And Reverend Mother said, " But, my child, did
you not feel the inestimable blessing our Lord
conferred upon you when He deigned in person to
enter into your body ? "

I changed on to the other foot again and looked
terribly guilty and heretical, but I said again, " Not
very much."

Then they seemed to grow so stiff with horror that
I was almost afraid. I felt as if we had all been
standing there for hours and no one spoke.

Then Reverend Mother said, " But, my child, do
you not believe in the Blessed Sacrament ? "

I felt my face growing redder and redder, and I
wriggled against the wall and then stood on one foot
again and looked down on the ground and said,
" Not very much."

I could feel them grow still more petrified. I was
still so full of impious curiosity that I could not help
peeping up again to see what they looked like. They
were still staring as before. Not one of them had
moved.

142 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

Then Reverend Mother said, " I must see to this.
I must speak to her," and she came out from the
rest and put her hand on my shoulder, and the other
nuns turned and went away without speaking. They
looked Hke long, black shadows floating down the
corridor, not one of them turning their heads or
speaking to the others, and their footsteps were
inaudible.

Reverend Mother kept her hand on my shoulder
and took me into one of the classrooms. She shut
the door behind us and then turned round to me and
said, " What was the meaning of your words to me
just now ? "

I said, " Which words ? "

And Reverend Mother said, " Is it possible that
you don't believe the Blessed Sacrament to be the
body and blood of our Lord ? Did you not beheve
that our blessed Lord Himself had come to you when
you made your first communion ? "

I said, " At first I did a Httle ; then I didn't."

Reverend Mother was so shocked that she could
not speak for a moment. Then she said, " But what
has come over you ? What has caused you to lose
your faith in such a terrible manner ? "

I said, " Because the priest carries it about so
much."

Reverend Mother asked, ** Carries, what about ? "

THE CONVENT I43

And I said, " The sacred host. He could not do
it if it were our Lord."

And she said, " But don't you know that the
catechism tells us that it is done by the power of God,
to Whom nothing is impossible or difficult ? "

I was nervous no longer. I felt I was growing
audacious.

I said, " God would not want to."

And she asked, " Would not want to what ? "

I said, " To change our Lord into bread and wine
and let Him be shut up in the tabernacle."

Reverend Mother was still more shocked, and I
went on arguing. I said if it was true about the
Blessed Sacrament the priest would not dare to
snore so that our Lord could hear him, and the
sacristan would not dust the tabernacle with a
feather brush as though it were furniture."

Reverend Mother asked me what I meant about
the priest's snoring, and I told her, and I said that
the sacristan did not make nearly such a deep bow
in front of the tabernacle when the chapel was empty
as when there were people watching him. He made
a careless little bob and went by. I had noticed that
too, when I was meditating in the chapel.

Reverend Mother stared at me again for a moment,
speechlessly, and then she said that in her whole life
she had never been so surprised and horrified. She

144 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

said she must have time to consider, and ask a
priest's advice before she could decide what to say,
or what to do with me.

She told me to go away, and as I was going she
asked me if I had spoken to any of my companions
in that manner. I said I had not, and she made me
give her my word of honour not to do so. I gave it,
but I noticed that, after that, during all the recreations
a nun kept me by her side and would not let me mix
with the other girls. That was because the nun was
afraid I should forget my promise and put my
companions into spiritual danger.

Next morning I was sent for into Reverend
Mother's room. Reverend Mother and the Mother
Prefect were there together.

Reverend Mother said that after considering the
matter for some time, she and the other nuns had
made up their minds that it would be better for me
to leave the convent at the end of the term. They
did not wish to expel me, because that would put a
slur on my character which I had done nothing to
deserve. She said I was a good, industrious girl,
but that they thought it would be better for me not
to mingle with the other girls under their charge,
because I had taken to such strange ways of thinking
and speaking. Did I understand } And I said,
" Yes, Reverend Mother."

THE CONVENT I45

And she said they would write to my relations and
recommend them to send me to a certain convent in
Germany.

Then she said, quite kindly, with no sign of anger,
" The discipline in that convent is good, and perhaps
they will do better for you there than we have been
able to do, though believe me, my child, we have
always tried to do our best."

She reminded me again that I had promised not
to speak about the matter to the other girls, and I did
not, and no one knew why I was going to leave.

When the time came I was extremely sorry to go,
and the nuns said it grieved them to lose me. But
they were quite sure that I should regain my religion
in the German convent, and that it would be better
for me in the end.

So I left, and went to Germany, and never saw the
convent or the nuns again. But I often thought
about them, and I shall always be grateful to them
for having been so kind to me.

CHAPTER IV

I GO TO GERMANY
I

I WENT to Germany at the end of July, in order
to spend some time with a German lady, Frau G.,
before the beginning of the term in the German
convent. Frau G. Hved in a Httle town on the banks
of the Rhine, and I was taken there by a young
EngHsh lady who was going to be a governess near
the same place. She came to see me before starting,
and we made friends. She looked so pretty and
dainty that she reminded me of a china tea-cup in a
best service. Her name was Miss H. She had blue
eyes that curved up a little at the corners. Her lips
curved upwards too, and when she smiled you could
see a dimple in each cheek where it began to turn
pink. When we started on the journey she wore a
tiny black hat to show how golden her hair was, and
some clean, frilly lace round her neck as white as
snow. I thought her so pretty that I sat opposite
her in the train and stared at her all the time, and a
melancholy-looking German gentleman who got into

*^'-

Mrs. Soskice (191 5)

(Juliet Hueffer)
After a dra-iving by Gertrude E. Thomson

I GO TO GERMANY 147

the same carriage seemed to fall in love with her and
stared too.

She did not mind my staring, but she disliked the
German gentleman because he seemed so sentimental.
He had a fat red face, and dull blue eyes, and a very
sweet smile, and his hair-dressing was complicated.
His head was shaved and covered with a stiff yellow
down, and he had a little spiky moustache that
stood out on both sides as stiffly and sharply as two
darning needles.

Miss H. held up a newspaper in front of her face
to hide it from him, and if she lowered it even for a
moment the German gentleman drooped all over
and smiled a melting smile as though imploring her
to love him.

When we left the train to go on board the ship he
followed close behind, and when we had stowed
away our things and taken our places on deck we
found that he had got a seat next to us.

It was a cold, windy day, although it was summer,
and when we started the ship began to rock. I had
never been on a ship before, and Miss H. thought I
might be nervous. She put her arm round me and
kissed me. When I saw that we were moving
further and further from the land I was startled, and
then I longed to put my arms out and cling on to it.
My throat began to ache and tears came into my

148 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

eyes and hid the coast from me. I hid my face
against Miss H. and cried. She leant over me and
wiped my eyes and waved her handkerchief to
England and said to me, " Look up and say good-bye
to England bravely, and when we come back we
shall find her faithfully waiting for us."

I raised my eyes, but the further we went the more
my heart ached, and I looked back until I couldn't
see a trace of England.

Presently it grew rougher and Miss H. wrapped
a rug round me and told me not to be alarmed
if she was ill. The gentleman in love got up and
staggered from one pillar to another until he got
downstairs.

Miss H. was glad that he was gone. She said,
" What an odious man ! "

But in a few minutes he was back again looking
more tender than before. He stood near us, swaying
and clutching at a railing with one hand, and he gave
us a little bow with his head and began to talk. He
could be silent no longer. He said, in German,
*' Will the gracious Miss permit me to give her some
advice ? "

We couldn't help staring at him and wondering
what he was going to say, and he said, " Perhaps the
gracious Miss is not aware that upon the ocean
repleteness is ever advisable ? "

I GO TO GERMANY I49

At first we could not understand what he meant,
but afterwards he explained and made it clear.

He said that he had been down below and eaten
everything he could lay hands upon. He had even
eaten pies and sandwiches that other people wanted
to buy, and had drunk a great many glasses of beer.
He was replete with things to eat and drink. He
said that on a ship that was the best thing to do,
because then if Nature made demands upon you it
was not so difficult to comply.

He looked at Miss H. and smiled brightly, and
bowed with his head again and said, " Jawohl ! "
(German).

But she stared the other way and would not take
any interest.

Then he sat down on my side (there were some
ropes on the other), and leant forward and looked
at Miss H. round me and said, " Will the gracious
Miss do me the honour to drink a glass of beer with
me?"

Miss H. looked the other way and pretended not
to understand. Then he leant forward again and
said, coaxingly, " Drink then a glass of beer, Miss.
Beer is, in such cases, an unspeakable consolation."

He looked full of affection, but Miss H. said
stiffly, " No, thank you."

But he could not bear to be so coldly repulsed ; he

150 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

longed to do something to show his love. He said,
" Eat then something, Miss. The pork pies are
remarkable. With a pork pie in the stomach can
one peacefully travel further."

But she said again, in an icy manner (she was
beginning to feel sea-sick), " No, thank you."

And he said, " Gott ! " (" God ! ").

He looked very sad. He ought, of course, to have
behaved in a more romantic manner, being in love.
But he probably did not know.

Miss H. was very ill, and we were extremely glad
to get off the ship into the train. We went into a
carriage marked " Damen," where no gentleman
would ever dare to follow. The gentleman in love
would have been glad to, but he knew it was im-
possible, so he put his portmanteau down in the
corridor outside our window and stood like a statue
staring in. Miss H. felt so ill that she was quite
indifferent. She leant back in a corner with her
smelling-salts to her nose and paid no attention.
After a little while she went to sleep and I grew
tired of sitting by myself, so I got up and slipped
into the corridor past the German gentleman and
looked out of one of the windows. But he followed
me and began to talk. He said, sadly, in English,
" English girls iss pretty, but, my Gott, how colt !
One tries one's best, but cannot please them."

I GO TO GERMANY 151

I said nothing and the German gentleman grew
more excited, and said, " It iss goot ven ze man shall
try to please ze voman and she iss pleased, but it iss
not goot ven ze man shall try to please ze voman and
she iss not pleased."

Then he frowned and went into a carriage and sat
down in a corner and folded his arms, and left his
portmanteau in the corridor where people tumbled
over it. I think he forgot it because he was so
grieved that Miss H. had not returned his affection.

I thought Germany a very pretty country. The
grass and trees and hedges were thick and green and
tidy. They looked expensive, somehow, as if a lot
of money had been spent upon them. The cottages
and farmhouses had a bright and comfortable
appearance, and there were trees weighed down with
apples standing along the roadsides. Sometimes
we passed a little girl walking along a road in a clean
black and white checked dress, with yellow hair
hanging in a pigtail tied with a ribbon at the end.
When she heard the train coming she would turn
and wave her hand and smile, and I thought I should
like to wear my hair in a pigtail instead of loose upon
my shoulders. Every now and then at a crossing a
tidy woman stood near the rails in a checked apron
waving a flag. Once we passed a fox standing alone
in the middle of a field with his head turned back

152 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

over his shoulder to listen to the train. Sometimes
I saw oxen pulling carts. The men in the carts had
big, peaceful faces, and the oxen were fat and neat
and looked expensive too, like the grass and trees
and hedges. It all seemed like a painted toy that I
should have liked to play with.

In the afternoon we arrived at K., a large, busy
town. The streets seemed cleaner and the wheels
smoother than in London. We were to pass the
night there, before taking another train to B.

In K. everybody's hair is extremely tidy, and their
boots are big and nicely blacked. Most people have
round faces and straight backs and staring eyes.
The gentlemen have beautifully brushed coats and
keep on bowing and taking their hats off to the
ladies, and the ladies hold their heads stiff and look
hostile at the gentlemen.

We were met at the station by a German gentle-
man, the uncle of one of Miss H.'s pupils. He was a
little, fat, elderly gentleman, with a spiky moustache,
and round black eyes with a network of wrinkles at
the corners and no whites to be seen. He had a big
cigar in his mouth and wore a nicely-kept top hat a
little on one side, and a very thick coat with a big
velvet collar that reached half-way up the back of
his head.

His name was Baron von Something (I did not

I GO TO GERMANY 1 53

catch his right name). He was evidently proud
because he was so important. When he told the
porters what to do with our luggage they bowed up
and down and said, " Ja, Herr Baron " (" Yes, Mr.
Baron") and, " Nein, Herr Baron" ("No, Mr.
Baron "), and when he walked he wagged his coat
tails from side to side, and if anybody got into his
way he waved them out of it with his stick.

When we were outside the station he told us that
he had two wonderfully beautiful houses in a wonder-
fully beautiful street, but he couldn't take us to them
because his wife had quarrelled with him and for-
bidden it. He could not bring his carriage either,
because his mother-in-law had quarrelled with him
too and forbidden that. So we got into a hired
carriage and drove about, as he said to see the town,
but he showed us nothing but restaurants. He was
very interested in restaurants, and whenever we
passed a specially big one he made the carriage stop
and stared at it and said was there anything in
London to equal that ? He told the coachman to
drive some way out of the town so that we might see
the restaurant he liked best of all. When we came
to it we got out of the carriage and walked down a long
hall with marble columns on each side, and waiters
with napkins kept bowing up and down and saying,
" Tag, Herr Baron " ('* Good-day, Mr. Baron ").

154 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

Then we came to an open-air place like a circus,
with little chairs and tables stretching in circles down
a slope until they came to a bandstand in the middle.
It looked something like a picture of the amphi-
theatre in Rome.

The Baron admired this very much. He stood
staring at it for a long time, until we were so tired
that we sat down near one of the little tables to wait
for him. He went on staring with his hat off as
though he were in church. At last he sighed, put
his hat on and said, " Da kann ein Mensch sich aber
gliicklich fiihlen " (" There can a man feel himself
happy ").

Then he told us that one could sit at the little
tables till late into the night, and order beer or choco-
late or anything one had a fancy for. He said there
was nothing one could mention or imagine that the
restaurant could not provide, and that there was no
restaurant in the civilised world to be compared
to it.

For some time after we got back into the carriage
he said nothing. He seemed dreadfully depressed.
But then he recovered and told the cabman to drive
us to another restaurant. It was in a big square
with a very tall church in the middle. We went all
over it. We looked into the big dining-rooms and
the kitchens, and wine cellars and cupboards, and

I GO TO GERMANY 1 55

into some little private rooms, and the people in them
were angry, but the Baron paid no attention. The
waiters kept bowing up and down and saying, " Tag,
Herr Baron," just as the other waiters had done.
The Baron said that this restaurant was the second
best in the civilised world.

Then we sat in a balcony overlooking the square
and drank chocolate and ate tarts with piles of
cream on them. The Baron was still very depressed.
Suddenly he banged his fist on the table and pointed
to the church in the middle of the square and said
he would build a church four times as high if his
mother-in-law would only die. He said, in German,
" My wife I can manage, but the old cat "

He said, would we believe that if his mother-in-
law came down the street and saw him sitting in the
balcony with two young ladies she would climb up
and pull him off by the hair of his head.

I was very sorry for him. I understood now why
he seemed so depressed. The more he talked about
his " Schwiege-Mama " (mother-in-law) the angrier
he grew, and all the while he continued eating tarts
and cream and drinking cups of chocolate. He went
on telling us about his mother-in-law.

He said that his wife was wonderfully beautiful, as
stately as a queen and that she weighed twelve stone,
but that his mother-in-law weighed more and

156 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

thought she was more beautiful than the wife, and
that whenever they went out the mother-in-law
insisted on wearing jewellery that the wife ought to
have worn, and then they quarrelled and both
scolded him. The mother-in-law was continually
going to the most expensive photographers and being
photographed in the wife's jewellery, and when the
wife saw the photographs she cried bitterly and
quarrelled with her mother, and then they both
scolded him. He said his mother-in-law ate more
than any living woman and that nothing disagreed
with her, but that she abused him on account of his
appetite so that he never dared to eat enough in his
own house. She forbade him to speak to other
ladies for fear he should give them jewellery that
otherwise he would have given to his wife, so that
she could wear it, and when she went out in the
street she wore such high heels to her shoes that
little boys followed in a tail behind and made rude
remarks. He said if it had not been for the
restaurants where he could escape from them both
and be at peace he would have hanged himself.
When he had finished the tarts and chocolate he got
up and paid the bill, and said he was going to take
us to another restaurant on the other side of the
square where he should have dinner. He said that
sometimes he almost thought this was the best

I GO TO GERMANY 1 57

restaurant of all and that was why he had kept it to
the last.

There were a number of fashionable people dining
in the restaurant. They were even tidier than the
people in the street, and many were very stout.
They wore their napkins tied round their necks, and
bent their heads down over their plates and ate
quickly as though they were afraid the other people
would finish first and snatch their food away from
them.

The Baron was pleased to see so many people
dining. He thought it proved that the restaurant
was such a splendid one. He said, in German,
" Hither can one peacefully bring a good appetite."

And he sat and watched them with his eyes
shining. It was the first time he had looked cheerful.
He said it had often comforted him in his darkest
moments with his mother-in-law to think that there
were places such as this where people could sit and
enjoy good food with healthy appetites while every-
thing was being so splendidly managed.

He ordered dinner for us, but said that he himself
would take nothing, that he could hardly ever eat.
I thought to myself that he couldn't very well be
hungry yet, because he had only just finished the
tarts and cream and chocolate ; but I said nothing.

He asked me how much my grandfather had left,

158 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

and I said I didn't know. He asked if he had kept
an hotel, and I said no, he was an artist, and he
shook his head as though he were sorry for him, and
said, " Arme Mensch ! " ('* Poor man ! ").

He went on watching the people eating until at
last he could resist no longer, and he called the
waiter and ordered dinner for himself, and tied his
napkin round his neck, and ducked his head among
the plates and glasses and began to eat as quickly as
the others.

When we left the restaurant the lamps were lit,
and the square looked very gay and pretty. The air
was so clear that the lights shone like diamonds, and
little electric trams were running backwards and
forwards gleaming like streaks of fire. There was a
band playing a waltz in the distance, and a great many
people were strolling about enjoying the fine evening.

But we drove back to the hotel near the station
and went to bed. I was glad to go, because I was
so tired. I had never travelled so far before.

II

Frau G.'s house had a long garden in front with
an avenue of trees leading down to a big iron gate.
We kissed one another good-bye at the gate. Miss H.
said I should be braver if I went into the house
alone, and that she was going to another house in B.

I GO TO GERMANY 1 59

and would come and see me very soon. I walked up
the long avenue to the house. The door was opened
by a very old servant in a white muslin apron with a
piece of black lace on her head. Her face was
pointed and very wrinkled. Her head shook slightly
and her eyes were dim, and she screwed them up a
little when she looked at me as if she could not see
me very plainly. But she smiled kindly at me, and
said, " Good-day, good-day, good-day, my little
Fraulein," and hobbled across the hall in front of
me to a room that looked like a drawing-room. The
floor was polished, and there were green and red
woollen mats spread about it, and chairs were
standing tidily round the walls. At one end of the
room was a sofa with a rug and table in front of it
and chairs set round. The sofa and chairs looked
very stiff' and hard. They were covered with pale
green velvet with a pattern upon it and lots of little
brass-headed nails all round the edges.

On one wall was a big picture of the Virgin Mary
ascending into heaven in blue and gold clothes, the
same sort of clothes she had worn in the convent in
London. The heaven was a very bright blue and
there were a number of golden stars painted on it
and all over the picture. There were other pictures
too in broad gilt frames ornamented with leaves and
bunches of grapes. Some were of young maidens

l6o CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

in flowing scarves, with pink, surprised faces and
staring eyes. They looked like relations of the
Blessed Virgin. Others were of dining-room tables
with bunches of bananas and rhubarb and poultry
and other things to eat spread out upon them. All
the pictures looked as if they were freshly painted
every day.

I stood on one of the woollen mats (I was afraid
to stand on the polished floor) and felt very sad and
lonely. I wished I had never come to Germany.
But suddenly I heard a sound of somebody breathing
hard behind me, and I turned round and saw a fat
little old lady in a black dress with a white lace cap
on her head. She had a big forehead and a round
face very fresh and rosy, and her eyes were blue and
clear. This lady was Frau G. She looked at me
intently for a time without speaking, and she kept
on grunting and breathing hard. Then suddenly
she smiled and her eyes shone and twinkled and made
her face look kind and merry. She came a step
nearer and took me in her arms and kissed me on the
forehead and said, " Liebes Kind ! Liebes Kind ! "
(" Dear child ! Dear child ! ")•

Her eyes beamed at me so brightly that I did not
feel lonely any more.

We sat down opposite one another at the little
table. Frau G. sat in the armchair and I sat in one

^ I GO TO GERMANY l6l

of the little stiff chairs and we began to talk. At
first she asked me how old I was, and many questions
about myself and my relations and my life in my
uncle's house. Then she asked me how I had
displeased the nuns in London, and I told her.
She said that I had been very wrong, that young
people should not try to argue and decide things for
themselves, because older people knew what was
best for them. When people got older and wiser
and sadder they had many thoughts that only the
old and sad could understand, but that youth should
be devoted to preparing for one's vocation in Hfe,
learning to be thrifty, and growing accustomed to
discipHne as the best preparation for future suffering
and disappointment. Then she stopped and nodded
her head and said, " So," but though she smiled
her eyes had no twinkle in them now, but looked
grave and sad. Then she said, in German, " And
how much money did your grandpapa leave behind
him when he died ? "

I said I didn't know, and she asked, " How many
houses did he have ? "

I said one house (at a time), and she said, " And
how many servants did he keep ? "

I told her, and she said, " Did he not then save
some money ? "

I said I didn't know ; I'd never asked any one ;

1 62 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

but I'd never seen him saving any, and she said,
** God ! How thriftless are the EngHsh."

Then she told me that in Germany everybody
saved up money and spent as little as they could,
and that was why they all got on so well. She said
that she still had some of the savings of her youth to
leave to her nephews and nieces and god-children,
and that she made her own woollen mats and bed
linen and embroidered the table covers and curtains
to save money, and that the pictures, although they
looked expensive, had been painted for nothing by a
maiden lady who had not been able to get a husband.
She had painted the pictures to fit the frames that
had been left by a relation in his will.

When she told me that she breathed hard and
grunted again and smiled and said, " So ! "

Then she asked me if I had a money-box, and I
said no, and she said, God ! she would get me one,
and that I should save up all the money I could in
order to buy house linen when I got married.

Then she got up and went across the room and
opened a cupboard and showed me rows of little
money-boxes with labels on them, and she said that
they were the money-boxes of the village maidens
of B. who were saving money to buy linen when they
got married, and that if they had not enough no man
would want to marry them. There was another

I GO TO GERMANY 1 63

cupboard with money-boxes in which the women
who were going to have babies saved up the money
to buy clothes for them. She said that no baby was
born in B. until its mother had enough money in her
box to pay for its clothes and bed and pin-cushion
basket. On the bottom shelf of the cupboard were
the money-boxes of the babies themselves and a pile
of prayer-books with pictures in them of God and
the saints, very foreign looking. Whenever a baby
was born in B. Frau G. gave it a money-box and a
prayer-book, so that it should have a chance of
providing for its body and soul.

When she had finished speaking she smiled and
grunted and twinkled her eyes again and said, " So ! "

I thought I ought to appear interested, and I asked
if the babies liked their money-boxes. But Frau G.
said that liking had nothing to do with it, that
people had to do many things they did not like for
their own good, and that everybody's first object
ought to be to save, because even a pin saved at the
proper time might in the end be the means of saving
a life. She didn't say how.

Then she came back and sat down near the table
again and said that in England people spent too
much money and youth was not disciplined. She
said that once, years ago, an English boy had come
to B. and put his feet upon her sofa cushions and had

164 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

spent his pocket-money without asking permission.
She had never forgotten it, and she was not surprised
at my behaviour in the convent, because ever since
she had known that boy she had said that England
was not the proper place in which to bring up
children. Now that I had come to Germany I
should get my religion back again and learn not to
argue.

Then she smiled and her eyes twinkled and she
said, " So ! "

III

Frau G.'s villa was on the banks of the Rhine. On
one side it had a balcony right over the river, and
there was a big shady garden behind with a tiny lake
and fountain in it. There were curving mountains
on the other side of the water, and a little village with
a tiny church in the middle, and a ferry-boat went
backwards and forwards between the two banks.
The village looked like a toy village from our side
and the church like a toy church. I used to lie on
the balcony and look across the Rhine and imagine
that there were wooden dolls with black hair and
bright red cheeks sitting in the cottages and walking
up and down the little streets and going into the
little church when the bell rang. It rang on Sundays
and sometimes in the evenings, and when the air was

I GO TO GERMANY 1 65

Still the sound came floating right across the river.
There were mountains on our side of the river too,
and beautiful green fields and valleys.

Frau G. took me for long walks into the mountains.
She was never tired. She wore a short net cape and
a little black bonnet with strings tied under her chin,
and she stumped along quickly in front of me,
thumping her umbrella on the ground and wagging
her shoulders a little from side to side as she moved.
She never went slower even up hill, but when it was
very steep she stopped every few minutes and turned
to look back for me with her cheeks very rosy and
tiny beads of perspiration on her chin. I was some-
times quite a long way behind and she stood and
waited for me, and when I came up she smiled and
gave a little nod and twinkled her eyes and said,
*' So ! " and then went on again.

Every now and then on the mountain side we came
to a little beer-house with a garden in front with
chairs and tables where you could sit down to get
cool and drink some beer or syrup and eat sand-
wiches. Whenever we stopped at one the landlord
himself always came out and bowed to Frau G. and
said, " Good-day, Mrs. Town-Councillor."

And Frau G. said, " Good-day, Mr. Landlord,"
and pointed at me and twinkled her eyes and said,
" This is a little English girl."

1 66 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

Then the landlord bowed again most politely and
said, " Ach, so-o-o ? And how does it please you
in Germany, Fraulein ? "

And I said, " Thank you, well."

Sometimes when we were walking in the mountains
we met peasant women coming down the path
carrying wood or bundles of some kind. They were
always clean and tidy and their faces were kind,
though they often looked worn and sorrowful.

Frau G. would stop and say, " Good-day, Frau .

How goes it then at home ? "

And they would tell her. If they were in trouble
tears came into their eyes as they spoke. Some of
them were very poor and toiled hard and had many
little children to take care of. Frau G. would always
say to them, ** Come, then, to my house, and we will
see what can be done."

And then when she had stumped on quite a long
way and I thought she had forgotten all about it I
used to hear her saying to herself, " Gott ! Die
arme Frau ! " (" God ! The poor woman ! ").

And there would be tears in her own eyes as well.

When we walked in the village or on the banks of
the Rhine troops of little children would come
running to meet us. Some had brown eyes, but
most had blue, and they nearly all had round faces
and checked pinafores. They kissed Frau G.'s

I GO TO GERMANY 1 67

hands and called out all together like little birds
piping, *' Good-day, Mrs. Town-Councillor ! "

And she would say, " Good-day, dear children.
How goes it then at school ? " or " How much have
you in your money-boxes ? "

And they would tell her, and her eyes would
twinkle and she'd point to me and say, " This is a
little English girl."

And they were always pleased and interested.
Some of them had never seen a little English girl
before, and they would call other children and say
to them, " Come quickly ! Here is a little English
girl ! "

And then more would come running up and stand
round and look at me.

The little girls would say, ** Does one then wear
the hair like that in England, Fraulein ? "

They meant loose on the shoulders as I had mine.

I said, " Yes."

And they said, " We wear little pigtails."

And then they turned their heads round to show
me their little pigtails.

Some of them came behind me and stood on tip-toe
and stroked my hair and said, " Ach, how beautiful !
Ach, how fine ! "

And one tiny girl lifted her baby brother up to
me and it stroked my cheek with its soft little hand

1 68 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

and said like the others but in a babyish way, *' Aie,
how beautiful ! Aie, how fine ! "

After mass on Sunday, while we sat waiting for the
country people to leave the church, the children all
came trooping down the aisle together, and when
they saw me they whispered to one another, " Look,
there's the little English girl," and then they smiled
at me, and some made a little bob to me as they went
past. I liked to go to mass just to see the children.

On Sunday afternoons we sometimes went for a
long walk by the Rhine to a very ancient village
where there was an inn with a terrace along the river
bank set out with chairs and tables. Many people
came to drink beer and chocolate and eat cakes there
on Sunday afternoons. Some walked from other
villages ; some came from the town C. in waggons,
and others came across the river in ferry-boats.
They were very cheerful. Each family sat round a
separate table. There were sometimes an old white-
haired grandfather and grandmother, and a younger
father and mother, and sons and daughters (a great
many) down to tiny children. Each family began
to sing as soon as it had had something to eat and
drink, and they sang very seriously, as though they
had promised to do so and were determined not
to stop. Sometimes the grandfathers and grand-
mothers sang too in weak old voices, but sometimes

I GO TO GERMANY 1 69

they only smiled and listened and wagged their
heads. The fathers and mothers sang loudest and
longest. The songs were always love songs. When
the young girls had eaten all the cakes they wanted
they got up and walked about the terrace between
the tables in threes and fours with their arms around
each others' waists. Some had thick plaits hanging
down behind, and some had coiled their plaits round
their heads and placed flowers in them. They had
white muslin dresses on and bare arms, and their
faces were pink and pretty. I used to think I should
like to make friends with them, but I was too shy,
because they seemed much more grown up than I.
Once when a group was passing our table Frau G.
stopped them and said to them, *' See, here is a little
English girl." And they stopped in a row with their
arms intertwined and looked at me with their gentle
eyes. I was ashamed to look at them at first, but
afterwards I grew more courageous.

They said, "Is it then beautiful in England,
Fraulein ? "

And I said, in German, though I was very shy at
speaking German to them, " Yawohl ! Wunder-
schon ! " (" Yes, rather. Wonderfully beautiful ! ").

And then I looked down on the ground again,
because I knew my eyes were filling with tears.
Whenever I thought of England I could see the

170 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

white cliffs and the grey sea as I saw them when the
ship was taking me away.

I did not cry, but the German girls could see how
near I was to tears, and they said, cheerfully, ** It is
right beautiful in Germany too, and when the
Fraulein is a little accustomed to it she will love
Germany too and no longer be homesick."

I felt grateful to them for speaking to me so kindly
and looking at me in such a friendly way. It made
me feel less timid about going among the strange
girls in the convent. I asked Frau G. if the convent
girls would be like these, but she was quite offended.
She said that these girls were daughters of the shop-
keepers of C, but the girls in the convent were of
good family and many of them had titles. I was
very sorry.

On Sunday evenings the young men marched
through the village to attract the girls to the dancing
hall. The young men had straight backs and
healthy faces and looked very handsome in their
Sunday clothes. The girls came out of the houses
and followed them arm in arm, in clean cotton
dresses and white stockings, and with smooth shining
hair. Once I went and peeped in at the *' tanzboden "
(dancing-floor), and saw them dancing. The girls
looked heavy but very joyful. When the young men
wanted the girls to dance with them they beckoned

I GO TO GERMANY 171

with their heads as much as to say, " Hi ! Come
over here ! " or with their hands, and the girls were
not offended but went up to them, and they danced
till they were wet with perspiration, and then they
stopped and wiped their faces and said, " Gott !
Wie mann schwitzt ! " (" God ! How one sweats ! "),
and sat down at the little tables round the walls to
drink beer and cool down again.

On church festivals big boats full of pilgrims went
floating down the Rhine to a holy shrine not far from
B. Some of the pilgrims knelt and prayed and
others sang, and red and blue and golden banners
waved. When it was a fine day and the sky was
blue and the sun shining the boats looked like
painted boats in picture-books, and we could hear
the pilgrims' voices plainly as they passed the house.

Once I went to see the shrine with a German boy
who had come from Berlin to pass his holidays in B.
We crossed the river in the ferry boat and walked
along the bank on the other side. The German boy
was very noisy. As we went along he kept throwing
things up into the air and catching them, and running
up and down the bank and shouting. He had tight
little brown curls and a round face and bright sly-
looking brown eyes. He was dressed in a blue
alpaca sailor suit trimmed with rows and rows of
white braid, and his knickers were very wide and

172 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

bound with elastic at the knee. He wore a little
round straw hat with a bow behind, and a sandwich
bag hanging from his shoulder on a long strap.
When he had nothing else to throw into the air he
threw the sandwich bag. He said that Frau G. was
his godmother, and that one of his uncles was a
millionaire, and that when they died they would
leave him a great deal of money. He said that if I
had as much money as he had it would be a good
thing for us to marry, because people who had the
same amount of money generally did so, that they
shouldn't quarrel afterwards about which had most.
I said that when I grew up I was going to marry an
Englishman. He said that Englishmen were as false
as cats, and I was offended. I said that their hair-
dressing was much more becoming than Germans'
because they didn't make their hair stand up all over
their heads like porcupines' quills.

He said, " Das ist ya schneidig " (" But that is
smart ").

I said I thought it was ugly, and he was offended
and said that when he grew up he was going to be an
officer and make his hair stand on end, and that many
frauleins with lots of money would be glad to marry
him, but that if one of them was an English fraulein
he wouldn't marry her, because English frauleins had
red hair and teeth sticking out in front.

I GO TO GERMANY I73

Then we were both offended and ceased speaking.
When we got to the shrine we found a large crowd
of pilgrims there and lots of little stalls with rosaries
and holy pictures on them, and women calling out to
everybody that passed to come and buy some. We
looked at the stalls and the German boy forgot that
we were not on speaking terms and said that all the
things were " dummes zeug " (" rubbish "), and that
only foolish people spent their money on them.
Then we went to look at the famous miraculous
statue of the Blessed Virgin that stood in a niche and
mended people's arms and legs and cured their
illnesses. It was made of wood and looked very old
and battered. Its face was an unhealthy yellow
colour and there was a crack down one side of its
mouth. I did not think much of it. I had seen
others that looked much more capable. But you
can't go by looks, and when once a person is famous
it doesn't make much difference.

There were crutches fastened to the wall and
spectacles and medicine bottles which had been left
there by pilgrims to show their gratitude for miracles,
or sent there when they died or when the doctor said
they did not need them any longer. The German
boy said that was " dummes zeug " as well, and that
the stories of the miracles had been made up for the
peasants to believe, because they were too stupid to

174 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

understand anything else. He said that he did not
believe a word of it, but he pretended to, because if he
did not his godfather and godmother would not leave
him the money they were going to if he did believe.
I had no faith in the miracles either, but I did not
tell him so, because I did not like him well enough.
I was angry with him for saying that the peasants
were so stupid. Other people, who are not peasants,
believe in miraculous cures and visions and spirits,
and they are not considered stupid. I was sorry for
the poor people who had come so far to ask the
Virgin Mary to help them. Some of them were old
and looked very sad and weak. Many were ill and
could hardly walk, but limped along on crutches, or
leaning on their friends. Women had brought sick
children with them to be cured. One carried a baby
on a cushion. It lay so still that it looked like a tiny
waxen figure. She was sitting alone with it, crying
and kissing it, trying to make it wake and look at her.
Her tears fell on its face, but it could not hear her or
feel her tears. I was sorry for her. I knew the
wooden image could not help the baby ; but if I had
told her so she would not have believed me.

IV

I promised Frau G. before going to the convent
that I would still go to confession and communion

I GO TO GERMANY I75

as though I had never fallen into the sin of doubt in
England. She said that if I did that without ques-
tioning I should get my religion back again. But I
did not think I should. When you've once got out
of the habit of making yourself believe things you
can't begin again any more than you can make
yourself feel ill again when you've got over the
measles. You've had them and they've gone, and
you can't get them back again. It's the same about
believing things.

The uniform of this convent was a black dress and
a black pelerine to wear over the top part of the
dress to keep it clean, and a black apron to keep the
skirt clean, and black over-sleeves to keep the sleeves
clean. Frau G. took me to a tailor to have the
things made. It was like getting ready to go to a
funeral. I had to have new underthings made as
well, because my English ones had too much em-
broidery on them to wear in a German convent.
They put me in danger of the sin of frivolity. I
was made to brush my hair tightly back off my
forehead and screw it into a little pigtail behind to
be insured against the sin of vanity. So I was fairly
safe.

It was a very hot morning when we set out for A.,
where the convent was. I wore my black clothes
and a black cape besides, and a black sailor hat, and

176 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

my pigtail hung down behind. I hated the clothes
and they made me dreadfully hot.

A. is a small village with an ancient church and a
square market-place and big cobble stones in the
street. Some of the houses were black and white
and some were grey. There were hills on all sides
of it, and on top of the highest we could see the
convent.

We arrived in A. just at dinner time and we went
into the hotel to have dinner before going to the
convent. The waiter showed us into a room with a
long table down the middle of it. There were a
number of stout gentlemen sitting at the table with
their napkins tied round their necks, eating pieces of
fat boiled bacon. Some had long glossy beards and
some had spiky moustaches, but the backs of all
their necks were red and damp with perspiration.
I was very surprised to see them ; we came upon
them so unexpectedly. For a moment they made
me think of the knights at King Arthur's table.
Frau G. said they were tourists, but I imagined to
myself that they had been sitting there for ever
eating lumps of bacon fat and never speaking or
telling any one where they came from. They did
not stop eating or look up from their plates for one
instant when we came in, and we sat down at the end
of the table and ordered dinner.

I GO TO GERMANY 177

After dinner we set out to climb the hill to the
convent. I wished Frau G. would not walk so fast,
because I was in no hurry to get there. A peasant
boy with curly hair and a lame leg pushed my box
on a little barrow behind us. It was so hot that he
perspired a great deal and he kept stopping every
few minutes to take his hat off and wipe his face.

We went up and up, and I began to think we
should never reach the top, but at last, when we were
all three panting, we came to the convent. It was
like climbing up the beanstalk to reach the giant's
castle.

There was a broad flight of steps up to the entrance,
and there were huge black double doors with iron
handles and a grating in the middle. When we rang
the bell the grating opened and a big red face looked
through and stretched its mouth and showed two
rows of large yellow teeth. I thought to myself it
was like the face of the giant's cook peeping out
through the spy-hole to see if there were a tasty
traveller anywhere near to make into a dinner for
the giant. But it was a lay sister who only meant to
smile at us when she showed her teeth. She did it
again when she had let us in, and she made a little
bob to Frau G., and said, " Good-day, Mrs. Town-
Councillor."

And she smiled again and told the boy with the

1 78 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

barrow to put my box down and go into the kitchen
for a glass of milk. Then she said that Reverend
Mother was waiting for us, and she took us under
an archway and across a courtyard into the house and
up a lot of stairs and along a corridor into Reverend
Mother's room.

It was a small room, but there were big un-
curtained windows in each of the four walls. The
sun was streaming in at the windows and the room
was as hot as an oven. On one side you could see
right over the playgrounds and fruit gardens, and all
the other land that belonged to the convent, and on
the others you could see the hills with woods on
them and the valley with a pretty river running
through it. There was scarcely any furniture in the
room but a table and some wooden chairs and a
writing-desk between two of the windows with a big
crucifix upon it.

I was very much surprised when I first saw
Reverend Mother. I thought I had never before
seen any one so broad and tall. Her face was big
and red like the lay sister's, with high cheek bones
and eyes like bright blue stones, and big sharp teeth
growing one upon another in the front. I thought
to myself that this room might be the watch-tower of
the castle and Reverend Mother the giant's wife on
the look-out to stretch her arms through one of the

I GO TO GERMANY 1 79

windows and grab hold of a passer-by in case they
had nothing to cook for dinner. I should not have
been surprised to see the giant come striding in with
his club.

Reverend Mother had a very deep, noisy voice,
and when she moved she seemed to fling herself
about and her skirts and veil whirled round her in
the air. But she seemed very kind. She talked a
great deal to Frau G., and kept leaving off in the
middle to laugh, " ha-ha-ha." It sounded more like
a big, cheerful dog barking than a nun laughing.
From time to time she stooped down and smiled
into my face and patted me on the shoulder, and it
felt like being rapped with a cricket bat.

Frau G. and Reverend Mother went on talking
together for a long time about all sorts of people I
didn't know, and I sat on a chair and wished I could
go back to B. with Frau G. instead of staying with
strangers in the convent.

At last Frau G. got up to go, and she came over to
me and kissed me and took my face between her
hands and said, " So ! So ! Sei ein gutes Kind "
(" Be a good child ").

I put my arms round her neck and clung to her ;
but she put them down again and nodded and smiled
to me and twinkled her eyes and said, " Goot-pye,
goot-pye," and I could see that she had tears in her

l8o CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

eyes, although they twinkled. She was sorry to
leave me all alone like that. I was afraid I should
begin to cry, but I controlled myself and did not
give way.

When Frau G. had gone Reverend Mother tried
to comfort me. She threw herself about and stooped
and looked into my face and went on talking loud
and fast in German. I was so irreverent that I
could not help imagining that she had suddenly been
changed by magic from the giantess into a big black
dog, wriggling and bounding and yelping as though
it wanted me to play. I tried to put the thought out
of my head, but I could not.

She said she would take me to Mother Estelle, who
was my dormitory mistress, and we went out of the
room and down the stairs and through a great many
passages. Reverend Mother kept flinging herself
along in front of me and turning her head back over
her shoulder to speak and smile at me, and she still
reminded me of a big black dog, running down
towards a river, looking round and barking and
begging me to throw a stone.

At last we turned into a long dormitory with rows
of cubicles in it and clean curtains round each one.
About half-way down the room we found a cubicle
with the curtains drawn back, and inside was a nun
on her knees before a little chest of drawers arranging

I GO TO GERMANY l8l

things in it. Reverend Mother said that this was
my cubicle and that the nun was Mother Estelle.
She introduced us, and smiled and rubbed her hands,
and gave another loud and cheerful yelp and threw
herself down the dormitory and out at the door. I
was glad she was gone, she was so noisy.

Mother Estelle was a very tall nun with a narrow
face and a long thin nose, red at the end. She had
small round dark blue eyes, set close together, and
her forehead was puckered in the middle as if she
worried very often ; as she really did. There were
thirty girls in her dormitory and she had to see that
they were tidy and superintend their manners.
When I went into the cubicle I saw that she had
unpacked my box and was putting my underclothes
away in the little chest of drawers. She looked at
each of the things and puckered up her forehead
still more and said they were all marked in the wrong
place, and that English people always marked their
things in the wrong place. It was really the tailor
in B. who had made the things and his wife who had
marked them. But I did not say so.

Then she shut the chest of drawers and sighed and
got up off her knees and showed me a little pin-
cushion on the drawers with four safety-pins stuck
into it. She said that I must always, at any moment
of the day or night, know where each of these safety-

1 82 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

pins was, but that I was never to use them except in
cases of absolute necessity. She said she had pro-
vided the pins for me because I was EngUsh. Ger-
mans never used pins, but EngUsh people had to,
because their buttons were always bursting and their
strings coming off.

Then she looked at my brushes and combs and
sighed again and said that the brushes were much
too soft, and that the teeth of the combs were much
too close together. She said that English people's
combs always had the teeth too close together,
because English people never threaded their combs
with cotton-wool to keep them clean as Germans did.

Then she puckered up her forehead again and said
that she was sorry to have an English girl in her
dormitory, because the English never could be taught
to do things in the way they ought to do them.
They never learnt to walk in the proper way or to
enter a room correctly. The real way was to open
the door a very little way and to put the right arm
and the right leg in first, round the door ; then to
bring the left leg in between the right leg and the
door ; then, the right arm and the right leg and the
left leg being safely inside the door, the left arm must
be brought in and the door handle passed from the
right hand to the left hand, and the door shut with
the left hand. She showed me how to do it round

I GO TO GERMANY 1 83

the left-hand curtain : I thought to myself that if the
door opened on the right-hand side one would get
one's limbs into a dreadful muddle. But Mother
Estelle said that that was the way to make the least
draught, and it only needed four moves in all.
English people threw the door wide open and came
in with all their arms and legs at once. They did
not wipe their noses in the correct manner either.
The correct way was to grasp the whole nose with
the handkerchief and turn the face away ; but
English people grasped the end which came first, and
went on talking just as usual. She said they did not
use their soup spoons properly either, and that they
were never taught to eat apple tart off the end of
their knives as Germans were. I thought I had
never heard a nun grumble so much.

When she had finished, she told me that if ever I
came out of my cubicle at night when once the
lights were out I should be expelled next morning.
Then she said that in a short time the girls would
begin to arrive and that at five o'clock they would
assemble in the big hall and I could meet them
there. She asked me if I should like to go and pray
in the chapel, but I said, " No, thank you " (I could
not have prayed at four o'clock in the afternoon), and
she puckered up her forehead and said that, in that
case, I must take a book and go and sit in the prepara-

184 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

tion classroom, and she gave me a book about the
lives of the saints and took me to the preparation
room. It was a broad gallery that ran right round
the top of a big hall with a polished floor. There
were rows of desks in threes in the gallery, and you
could look down over the balustrade into the hall
beneath.

I sat down at one of the desks and felt utterly lost
and lonely. At first I looked at the pictures of the
saints in the book, but I didn't like them. They
were too stout and foreign looking, and they had
smooth faces and curled flowing hair. In our books
in England the saints had looked hungry and pensive,
as they should, seeing how much they had to mortify
the flesh. I soon got tired of the book and shut it
up and put my arms on the desk and laid my head
upon them feeling very sorrowful. Then suddenly
I heard a door open in the hall below and footsteps
and voices, and when I looked over the balustrade I
saw a number of girls in black dresses trooping into
the hall, and I knew it must be five o'clock. I got
up and went out of the gallery and down the stairs.
When I reached the bottom I walked along a
passage in the direction of the voices until I reached
the door of the big hall. There were crowds of
girls in black dresses coming down another staircase
that led from the dormitories. Most of them had

I GO TO GERMANY 1 85

their arms round one another's necks or waists, and
sometimes they stopped and rubbed their cheeks
together and kissed, and looked into one another's
eyes, and then went on again.

They were all dressed exactly as I was, and all had
their hair in plaits, some hanging down behind and
some twisted round their heads. Most of them had
fair hair and blue eyes, but some had black hair and
eyes and brown faces, and a few had red hair and
freckles. Some were tall and broad with big hands
and feet, but most were small and plump and pink,
with curly mouths and chins and bright eyes. They
were talking and laughing all together and looking
about for their friends, and waving their hands to
others in the distance and calling out, " Tag, Lise ! "
or " Tag, Gretchen," and when two friends met they
kissed one another on each cheek and began talking
both at once, and then they walked away together
with their arms round one another's necks.

I slipped into the hall and sat down on a chair near
the door. There were chairs all round the walls
and some other girls were sitting alone on them.
They were new girls too, but there weren't any
other English girls.

Sometimes a group of girls came up to the new
ones and stood round them and asked questions.
They came up to me and asked questions too.

1 86- CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

They said, " Wie heisst du ? " (" What is your
name ? "). And, " Woher bist du ? " (" Where do
you come from ? "). And, " Wass ist dein Vater ? "
(" What is your father ? "). And, " Bist du reich ? "
(" Are you rich ? "). And one said, " Bist du adel ? "
(" Have you a title ? ").

I was getting used to being asked questions since
I had come to Germany. In England we were told
not to ask them. When I said I came from London
they said, " Gott ! Ein grosse Stadt ! (" God ! A
big town ! "), and asked if I was English. And when
I said yes, they called out to others, " Here's an
English girl ! "

And then others came up and they all stood round
and stared at me without speaking. I stood in the
middle and folded my arms behind my back and
curled one leg round the other and stood on one foot.
I always felt as though I had locked myself up safely
somewhere when I stood like that. When they had
finished staring they went away again. At seven
o'clock a bell rang and we went to a long refectory
to have supper off ham rolls and milk and water, and
at nine o'clock we went to bed.

Next morning, after mass, we all went out into
the playground. Some girls walked up and down
in twos and threes with their arms round one another's
waists as they had done in the big hall the night

I GO TO GERMANY 1 87

before, and some sat on benches and did needlework.
Many were crying. They didn't cry to themselves
secretly as most people do, but quite loudly, " Ooh-
ooh ! Ooh-ooh ! " and their friends tried to comfort
them. As soon as a girl put her handkerchief to her
eyes other girls ran up and crowded round her and
helped. Sometimes they held smelling-salts up to
her nose, and they kept saying, " Gott ! Armes
Ding 1 Hat Heimweh ! " (" God ! Poor thing !
She's homesick ! ").

Soon girls were bursting into tears all over the
playground, and their friends ran up to them. It
reminded me of the people being taken ill on the
steamer and the steward hurrying to take care of
them with the basin. One stout girl in a very short
skirt with a sandy pigtail and a big flabby face was
so noisy that she soon attracted everybody's attention
and got the biggest crowd round her.

She kept screaming, " Mama ! Mama ! Ich
sterbe ! Ich sterbe ! " (" Mamd ! Mam^ ! I die !
I die ! ").

And she made her arms stiff and fell backwards on
top of the others so that they had to hold her up.
Whenever she felt a little better she smiled and
kissed them all round, and pulled a big tin of sweets
out of her pocket and offered them to everybody and
ate some herself ; and when she had had enough

1 88 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

she put the hd on the tin and the tin back in her
pocket and began to cry again. Soon most of the
girls were in tears and there were scarcely any left to
comfort them.

I was very much surprised. I had never seen so
many people crying all at once before. I was
inclined to cry myself, but I didn't because I didn't
want to be comforted by strangers, and I had not
made friends with any of them yet.

Next day we were put into " trios." That meant
that the same three girls were made to walk about
together or sit together during recreation for a whole
week, and not allowed to walk or sit with any other
girls. If a nun met a girl standing or sitting alone
in the playground she would say, " Where is your
trio ? "

And then the girl had to go and find the other two.
They hated being in " trios," because they always
wanted to talk to their " best friends," instead of the
girls they were in " trio " with. Sometimes they
used to escape from their " trios " and meet their
" best friends " in corners, but in a moment a nun
would surely come up behind and say, " Where are
your ' trios ' ? " And they had to go back to them.

They used to make secret appointments to have a
little talk with their " best friends " in all sorts of
odd places, behind doors, in passages, even in the

I GO TO GERMANY 1 89

lavatories ; but it was no good. They were always
found out and separated.

Sometimes a nun would call one of the giris and
ask what they had been talking about in her " trio "
that day, and later she would call another and ask
her the same question in order to see whether the
first one had told the truth.

From time to time the girls were sent for to talk
with the priest in his room. He lived in the convent
and was a very nice man, with long legs and untidy
skirts always flapping round them. He had a big
hooked nose and kind brown eyes, and his face
always looked bright and pleased. He stooped down
and looked right into a person's face when he was
talking to them. His voice was so high and squeaky
that it could be heard coming from a long way off",
and one could often hear him talking without seeing
him at all.

He used to walk across the playground to say mass
in the chapel with his eyes turned up to heaven, his
hands folded in his sleeves, his draggled-looking
skirts flapping, and the deacon, who was also his
manservant, following behind ringing a bell. The
girls in the playground always got up and curtseyed
and made the sign of the cross when he went by, but
his eyes were turned up so far that he didn't see
them : but at other times when he came into the

190 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

playground he was very kind and lively, and he knew
no end of little jokes and riddles to make us laugh.

When I went into his room I found him looking
at something in a note-book. I think it was the Ust
of " trios " I had been in during the month. He
told me to sit down and began to ask me questions
about the girls I had been in " trio " with : how I
liked them, what I had talked about with them, what
they thought about different things, and what I had
heard the others talk about together. I could not
answer all the questions, because I had not taken
much notice of what the others did or said ; I didn't
know I was supposed to. But he said, never mind,
I should do better next time.

Then he said he would like to talk English with
me, because the English was a noble and interesting
language which he had always wished to master. He
said he knew much English literature and had an
English newspaper sent to him every week, because
he was so much interested in England. He had
always wished to visit England, but he had never
been able to because he had an invalid brother with
whom he spent all his free time, and he could never
make up his mind to go so far from him. Every
summer he meant to spend his holiday in England,
but when the time came he had not the heart to go.

He asked me the names of many things in English,

I GO TO GERMANY I9I

and when I told him he said, " Gott ! Ein in-
teressante Sprache " (" an interesting language "), and
wrote it down in his note-book. When his English
newspaper came he used to give me the advertise-
ment sheets, and I kept them in my desk, and when
I felt homesick I slipped my hand into the desk and
touched the paper and remembered that it had come
from England and felt comforted.

The other girls were very sentimental. They were
always sending long, loving letters home to their
fathers and mothers and friends, filled with kisses
and little flowers and leaves and locks of hair. They
kissed the envelopes when they had addressed them
and said, " Darling mamachen," or " Darling
papachen," or " dading brother," or " darling little
sister."

They had numbers of keepsakes and stacks of
photographs in their desks of fathers and mothers
and grandfathers and grandmothers and aunts and
uncles, and they were always taking them out and
kissing each one separately. Many were the por-
traits of officers their relations. They used to hand
them about to the other girls under their desks
during preparation and admire each other's officers.
They said, '' How bold ! " "How fierce!" "How
God-like ! " " What passionate eyes ! " " What a
fascinating nose ! " " What divine moustaches ! "

192 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

Each girl told stories about her own officers to show
how brave they were. The girl next to me said that
her brother, who was a lieutenant, had hit his orderly
in the mouth and knocked some of his teeth out, and
that in the evening when they were at dinner the
orderly had tried to kill him by breaking a champagne
bottle on his head. But the lieutenant had not been
frightened. He just jumped up, pulled out his
revolver and shot the orderly. Another girl said
that her father, who was a general, said that why the
English army was so bad was because the officers
had no power to punish their men. But I said that
English soldiers were so noble-minded that they
never needed punishing, and that all they thought
about was avoiding going to places where they might
be led into temptation. That sounded like boasting,
but I should not have said it if they had not spoken
first.

Many of the girls had the photographs of their
houses, and they showed these too (some were great
houses in parks), and said how many rooms they had,
and what the furniture had cost, and how many
sheets and tablecloths their mothers had ; how many
guests came to their parties, how much money they
would be given when they married, and how
rich their " brautigams " (future husbands) would
be. Some of the elder girls knew their " brau-

I GO TO GERMANY 1 93

tigams " already, and the others pretended they did,
and told one another secrets about them. All the
girls adored babies and flowers and birds, and ate
pounds of chocolate. They said everything they
liked was " divine " or ^' too sweet." Each girl
*' schwarmed " for somebody (" schwarming" is some-
thing like being in love, but not so serious). Some
girls schwarmed for each other, some schwarmed
for one of the nuns, some for the doctor. Many
schwarmed for the priest, and one or two for the
deacon. One even schwarmed for the gardener,
though he was very stiff and gouty and had a pimply
face. She said a gardener's calling was one of the
most poetical. One girl schwarmed so much for
another girl that she scraped her initials on her arm
with some scissors and filled the scratches with ink
to make it look like tattoo. And when she had done
so she was afraid she might get blood-poisoning and
fainted through fright, and the nuns sent her to the
infirmary. One drew a picture of the priest saying
mass and kept it in her desk, and whenever she
needed a book out of her desk she put her head into
it and looked at the picture, and sometimes she cried
over it and said, " Gott ! Wie sieht er fromm und
heihg aus ! " (" God ! How pious and holy he
looks ! ").

One of the nuns found the picture, but she did not

194 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

know what it was meant to be. She thought it was
a kind of paper puzzle and that when the girl put her
head inside the desk she was trying to solve it with a
pencil. It was thrown into the waste-paper basket.

The girl who schwarmed for the gardener did not
draw a picture of him (she had not a talent for
drawing as the first girl had), but she kept a book
about flowers and vegetables in her desk, and said
that when she grew up she would be a vegetarian
and eat as little meat as possible. She said that
though he was a gardener he might have a most
romantic nature, and very likely spent his spare time
in writing passionate love poems ; but dared not
say whom he loved for fear of losing his situation.

One holiday I saw a tall stout girl looking through
a window at the girl she schwarmed for and wiping
the tears from her eyes, and when I asked her what
the matter was, she began to cry outright, and said,
"It is too sweet. My Schwann is wearing a lace
petticoat ! "

The girl she schwarmed for was pulling up her
stocking in the playground so that her lace petticoat
was showing, and it made her cry because she thought
it so touching.

I was glad when holidays came, because then we
went for a walk in the woods outside the convent
grounds. The priest walked first of all with his

I GO TO GERMANY I95

English newspaper, and he would take me out of my
" trio " to walk with him and explain to him the words
he didn't understand. All the time he kept saying,
" Das ist aber interessant I " (" That is interesting 1").

And he kept writing in his note-book and under-
Hning things. Once he began to talk about England.
He said that in England there seemed so little super-
vision and yet the people kept the laws. He said,
" Bei uns ging das nicht " (" With us it would not
do ").

And he began to think about it and pushed his
hat on to the back of his head and walked faster,
forgetting that he was pulling me along with him.

Some of the girls did not like England and used
to talk against it. They said that English ladies
could not cook and that was why gentlemen would
not marry them and there were so many old maids
in England ; and that English people only washed
their dishes in one water instead of three as Germans
did ; and that they did not keep their coffee-pots
properly clean, or their clothes properly brushed, or
their houses properly dusted. They said that every
German girl went to a house-keeping class to learn
how to keep house and clean and cook.

I said that cooking was not important, but they
said that it was and that once a prince had gone to
dinner with a general and asked who made the soup,

196 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

and when he heard it was the general's daughter who
had made it he insisted on marrying her, although
she was ugly and had no money.

Except on holidays we scarcely moved at all. At
recreation, when it was fine, the girls sat round the
playground on benches and did crochet work, and
when it was wet they walked round the big hall in
** trios " and sang, " Deutschland, Deutschland
iiber alles."

I could not get used to it. I felt I wanted to run
about and play at something. We had been for-
bidden to sit still in the English convent. When I
said that we had played cricket in England the girls
were surprised and shocked. They said that if
young girls ran about and became as rough and
noisy as boys no gentlemen would want to marry
them.

But I didn't care about gentlemen wanting to
marry people. Sitting still so long made me feel
ill. I used to turn giddy and I lost my appetite.
We had pork for dinner nearly every day and salt
fish on Fridays. The smell of food made me feel
ill. I often had nightmares and I think the other
girls had them too, but they said that they had
visions. They took their " best friends " into
comers in the morning and told them about it.
They said their favourite saints appeared to them

I GO TO GERMANY 1 97

and made them all sorts of promises. One morning
before mass the girl who slept in the cubicle next
mine (the girl who had cried so loudly in the play-
ground) called a lot of other girls round her and
began telling them about a vision she had had in the
night. She said that the Blessed Virgin had come
into her cubicle with a pale Ught all round her and
had told her of delightful things that would happen
to her. One girl asked if the Blessed Virgin had
said anything about a " brautigam," and she began
kissing the others all round and said she had, but
that she had told her not to tell the other girls what
she had said in case they should be envious. She
said that for nothing in the world would she repeat
what the Blessed Virgin had said about the " brauti-
gam," but that he would be very rich and of noble
family.

That same afternoon I was very feverish and my
head ached terribly. The girls were very kind to
me. They all wanted to kiss me and they did
everything they could think of to comfort me, until
at last a nun came up and said that I must go to the
" kranken-haus " (infirmary).

The infirmary was a little house built in a comer
of the convent grounds. It had a lot of nice bright
rooms in it with beds. There were three girls in
bed in the room I was taken to. The doctor was

198 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

going in just in front of me. The girls were talking
and laughing very cheerfully as we went in, but as
soon as they saw the doctor they stopped and began
to tell him what kind of pains they had. The first
girl said, " Oh, God ! Mr. Doctor, I have such
agony in my stomach."

She had on a little lace cap, and her two yellow
plaits were so long they reached half-way down the
bed on each side of her. She looked like one of the
big baby dolls they sell in the Christmas toy bazaars.
She screwed up her face to show the doctor how bad
the pain was.

The second girl had a big brown face and a
straight nose and white, even teeth. She had pains
in her inside too. She kept saying, " Dear Saviour !
My stomach hurts so dreadfully."

The doctor said the first girl was to have a com-
press put on her, and then the third girl began to
say, " May I not have a compress too, dear Mr.
Doctor ? I die of pain."

And then they all began to talk at once and ask if
they might have the different things they wanted.

The doctor said, " My dear young ladies, have
patience."

And he drew me up to him and sat down and
said, " Well, my child, have you pains in your
inside too ? "

I GO TO GERMANY 1 99

The nun who had brought me told him what was
the matter with me, and he began to ask me about
the school in London, and the food we had to eat ;
and he said to the nun it was plain that German
school-life did not agree with me. I was having too
much white meat and not enough exercise. He said,
" This won't do. The child must go back to
England."

Then he said I was to go to bed and take a powder,
and that he would speak to Reverend Mother about
me.

Then he got near the door and said that the other
girls were to have nothing more to eat that day and
were each to have a big dose of castor oil in the
morning.

They began throwing themselves about and
crying out, *' Ach, weh ! Ach nein, Herr Doktor ! "
(" Oh, woe ! Oh, no, Mr. Doctor ! ").

They reminded me of the fallen angels tossing
upon the lake of fire in " Paradise Lost."

But the doctor slipped through the door and got
away.

A few days later Reverend Mother sent for me and
began dancing round me and booming in her deep
noisy voice that I was to leave the convent and to go
back for some time to Frau G.'s house to get strong
before returning to England. She patted me on the

200 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

head with her heavy, wooden fingers, and said that
she would be very sorry to lose me, and that every-
body in the convent would be very sorry. 1 curtsied
and said, " Thank you. Reverend Mother."

The priest shook hands with me a great many
times and said that one day he would come to see me
in England, and I should take him to see the Houses
of Parliament, and I said I would.

The girls were very sorry I was going. They kept
on kissing me all day long, and they gave me hundreds
of little keepsakes, and I gave them everything I could
think of in return. Even Mother Estelle was sorry
(although I was English) ; I had tried to be tidy and
polite so as not to worry her.

CHAPTER V

I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN

WHEN I got back from Germany I found that
I was going to live with my mother again.*
I was very glad. My two brothers had grown up
and gone away and we lived by ourselves in a house
that was small but very pretty. It was filled with
pictures as my uncle's house had been, but it was
small and had not many stairs. In most of the
rooms there was graceful-looking shining furniture
called Chippendale, and there were pretty carpets
on the floors and gay papers on the walls and flowers
on the tables. My mother made any room pretty
she went into, and my grandfather once said that if
a room were to have nothing in it but a few packing-
cases and some rags " Cathy " would make it look
charming in a moment. She always chose books
with the brightest and prettiest covers to put in
front of the shelves in the bookcases and put the
ugly ones behind, even if they were learned. She
said it was quite easy to get them out if you wanted

* Mrs. Catherine Hueffer, widow of Dr. Francis Hueffer.

202 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

to, and the bookcases glowed and gleamed like great
big jewels.

My mother was very pretty. She had fair hair
and an absolutely straight nose, and a nicely shaped
mouth with beautiful even white teeth, and her eyes
were a bright clear blue. When I came home from
Germany she looked sad and wore a black dress. If
any one began to tell her something that sounded
like bad news her eyes would grow frightened in an
instant, and her face would look strained and anxious
until she found out that nothing really serious was
the matter. That was because so many people she
loved had died within the past few years : my father,
and my grandfather, who was her father, and my
grandmother, who was her mother, and my aunt, who
was her half-sister; and she always seemed to be
afraid that other people were going to die. She had
loved her father and mother better than anything in
the world. When she spoke of my grandmother the
tears always came into her eyes, and when my
grandfather was mentioned she sighed and said,
" Ah, dear ! Poor papa ! " When people told her
of misfortunes that had happened to themselves or
others her face looked sorrowful and her mouth grew
lined with pain, even if she didn't know them.
But when she heard of other people's good fortune
she looked just as proud and joyful as if it had

Mrs. Catherine Hueffer

(Cathy Madox-Brown)

Bj/ For J Mculox-Bro-iun

I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 203

happened to herself. She would go off at once to
any distance to help a person, no matter who it might
be, even if she did not like them very much. She
would sit up night after night to nurse a friend, or a
servant, or anybody who was ill, and never complain
and say she was tired next day. If people came into
the room when she was sitting in a comfortable chair
she would get up at once and make them take the
best chairs and she herself would take the worst and
say, " I always like a hard chair. It's better for my
back." And if she had fruit or sweets or anything
nice to eat she would give it all to the first person she
met and say, " You take it. It really isn't good for
me. I'm only eating it because I don't want it to
be wasted." She was always ready to give up
anything she had to any one who wanted it. But if
she saw a big boy beating a little boy she would
rush out to stop him. If she heard of a strong
person ill-treating a weak one her face would grow
red and her eyes would shine and she would be nearly
as furious as my grandfather used to be, and she'd
say, " I hate injustice." If she had ever met a
tyrant tyrannising she would most certainly have
attacked him. She was rather timid on her own
account, and afraid of things like mad dogs or drains
or men who looked rough or as if they had bad
characters. But if she was protecting some one

204 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

weaker than herself she was afraid of nothing. She
didn't much Uke being contradicted because, she
said, " I never insist upon anything unless I'm
positively certain'' And when people proved to her
that she was wrong she would look exceedingly
surprised and say, " It's most extraordinary ! "

When she was a girl she had painted some very
beautiful pictures which had been admired by
famous artists, and placed in exhibitions, and nearly
always sold. But she couldn't give much time to
painting because there was always some one ill or
in trouble, or who wanted taking care of. At first
she took care of her father and mother and her
brother Oliver, who was said to be a genius. When
she was married she took care of my father and her
children and her house and servants and a lot of
other people besides, and then she gave up painting
altogether. Sometimes when she was telling me
about it her face would look wistful and she'd sigh
and say, " It did seem a pity I " But then she'd
correct herself immediately afterwards and say she
thought perhaps she had been happier taking care of
other people than painting pictures.

When I got back to England I was growing a big
girl. I kept my hair in a pigtail as I had worn it in
Germany and had all my dresses let down. But I
had not got my religion back. The discipline had

I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 205

made me tidy, but it did not give me faith. When
I had thought it over I knevir that why I had found
it so difficult to believe in religious things was because
I'd only been told to do so by other people, who had
also been told to do it by other people, and so on.
They'd none of them had any proof or anything to
show for it. And the people who had taught me
did not look particularly clever. They said that
what they taught had been revealed by God. But
other people said God had revealed just the opposite
and that the first people believed wrong and would
be punished for it. Mr. Hall, the most pious of the
cabmen in the mews near my grandfather's house,
would have said that the Pope and the saints and
the priests and the nuns were thorough bad lots, and
they would have said that he was doomed. And
they would both have said that the Jews and Turks
and other heathens " stank in the face of God "
(that was a sentence in one of Mr. Hall's sermons).
And the Jews and Turks and other heathens would
have scorned them back and said they were unclean
and didn't have their food cooked in the proper way.
It's very puzzling, and it makes it very awkward for
the Lord, because they are all certain that He is on
their side and expect Him to punish the other
people. I asked my mother what she thought about
it, and she sighed and said, '* It was quite true, and

206 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

the same in everything^ not only religion." She said,
" If only people wouldn't disagree so much ! It
would make it better for everybody."

But having nothing at all to believe in somehow
used to worry me. Before I went to the convent,
when I had been an anarchist, I had believed in
punishing tyrants and getting up a bloody revolution
to make everybody happy. Believing in nothing at
all is like walking up a long staircase with no bannisters
to hold on to.

One day a grown-up young lady came to see me.
She was the elder sister of one of the Protestant
girls in the English convent. She was very tall and
slim and she stooped rather, and she was very
fashionably dressed. She had a long light brown
face, not quite straight, and large black eyes that
protruded slightly. They did not look very kind or
clever but empty and bright, and as if they did not
see very far. Two of her teeth stuck out just a little
in the front, but not enough to be really ugly. She
had a moist-looking mouth that smiled rather often,
smiles of different sizes. Some were quite tiny
smiles, some were a little bigger, and when they were
biggest you saw her teeth quite plainly. She sat in
an armchair opposite to me and talked and her arms
and legs looked very long and tired.

She said that since she had been grown up she

I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 207

had been going into society, but that now she had
left off going there. She said that people in society
were frail and unprincipled and did disgraceful
things. Some of the things they did were to bleach
their finger-nails, and have their faces skinned at
great expense to make themselves young and beauti-
ful, and sit in dark rooms waiting for the agony to
pass. And afterwards, if they were not as young and
beautiful as they thought they ought to be, they
refused to pay the bill and went to law. She told
me a lot of other things they did, but I have not got
room to put them all down here. She said that all
the people in society hated and despised one another
for not having something they ought to have or for
not doing something in the way they ought to do it
(just like religious people), and that all they thought
about was rushing from place to place in search of
feverish amusement, ruining one another's reputa-
tions and taking care that other people should not
find out how bad they were themselves. She said
that she had written an article about it exposing
them, but it had not been published. Then she
took a very big pair of spectacles with deep black
rims out of her pocket and put them on. Her fingers
looked very thin while she was doing it and the
glasses made her eyes swell out and look like dark
muddy pools. Then she smiled a small smile and

208 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

said that when she first went into society people
had told her that if she put on nice clothes and stood
about for long enough in a sufficient quantity of
drawing-rooms some gentlemen would in the end
be certain to want to marry her ; but that she had
stood about in a great many drawing-rooms for a long
time, and although several gentlemen had looked
from a distance as though they would like to marry
her, when they had come nearer and been introduced
they hadn't wanted to any longer. Then she smiled
a medium-sized smile and said that she was not
sorry the gentlemen had not wanted to marry her,
because since she had left off going into society she
had been studying and thinking deeply, and had
little by little been drawing nearer to perfect truth.
I was very interested. It sounded just what I was
looking for, and I asked her to explain it to me. She
said that it was difficult to explain to any one who
had never studied it, but that, combined with perfect
beauty, it was in everything around us if only we
had the perception to perceive it. If we put our-
selves into a proper frame of mind and sought it
earnestly we could not fail to find it. Sometimes it
gradually became apparent, and sometimes it was
suddenly apprehended in an illuminating flash of
light. It was really the same thing as the Immense
Reality. I asked her who had found out about it,

I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 209

and she said that it had been revealed by the Master
Mind vi^hich v^as the same thing as the Omnipotent
Reasoner, or the Supreme Will. She said that she
had v^^ritten an article about that too, but that it had
not been published.

I said it sounded very difficult to understand and
that I should like to have it properly explained.
She said that she could take me to some places v^here
very vs^ise and learned people were giving explana-
tions. Some did it for five shillings, some for half-a-
crown, and some for less. Some charged a great
deal, as much as a guinea, and they v^ere the cleverest
and wisest of them all.

On the following Sunday we went to a small house
in a fashionable quarter. We went up the steps
into the passage, and a long, thin lady in a tight black
dress, with a tiny head and Ught eyes and no chin,
with shining black cherries in her hat, who was
selling literature stopped me in the entrance. She
seemed to think I was too young to go in and asked
me if I had ever seen anybody under control. I said,
** Oh, yes ; often." I thought to myself that all
the girls at school had been under control, and
servants, and everybody else who had to do as they
were told. She did not mean that, but I thought
she did. Then the grown-up young lady paid her
five shillings for each of us and she let us pass.

210 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

We went into a room on the right-hand side of the
passage. It looked out on to a garden. At the top
of the room there was a platform with a desk upon
it, and there were rows of chairs across the middle
of the room. The window and the walls had purple
hangings. A middle-sized lady was sitting at the
desk on the platform. She had dark yellow hair and
pale greeny-grey eyes that moved about very quickly
and sandy eyebrows. Her face was heavy and sallow
and looked business-like, but not healthy. She was
a spiritualist lady. She was counting up little heaps
of pennies that were standing in a row on the ledge
of the desk and putting them into a silk bag with
strings. There were a lot of other ladies sitting on
the chairs. They all looked expensively dressed.
They wore fur coats and fashionable hats, and most
of them had pink trustful faces and wide-open eyes.
Many of them had on pearl necklaces and you could
see the little clasps of them just inside the collars of
their coats when they pushed them back. The lady
at the desk was so busy counting up the pennies that
she took no notice at all of them, but they were all
staring hard at her as though they thought that what
she was doing was very important. When she had
finished counting the pennies she tied up the bag
and rang a little bell and said that now the sitting
would begin. Then she got off the platform and

I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 211

went to a chest on the left-hand side of the room and
took out a white robe Hke a nightgown, and put it
on and tied it in round the waist with a string, and
the other ladies stared hard at her all the time.
Their eyes seemed to roll round after her all together
as if they were only one pair. The spiritualist lady
went back to the platform and said she would give
her usual Sunday morning address, and that after-
wards she hoped to go " under control " for a little
while, and then perhaps there would be some
interesting messages from our spirit friends. She
had rather a sharp, grating voice, not at all pleasant
or friendly. She passed her hand across her fore-
head and wore a dreamy, far-away look, and said
that she could feel the presence of many spirit friends
that morning, waiting to give us messages of hope
and comfort. She was just going to begin the
address when she remembered that she had not
locked up the bag with the pennies in it, and she
pulled up the white robe and took a key out of the
pocket in her skirt underneath and locked the desk
and put the key back into her pocket. Then she
passed the back of her hand over her forehead again
and began the address.

She said that while we were in the material world
what we must be most careful to do was to keep our
bodies in good condition for the sake of any of our

212 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

spirit friends who might wish to use them for
demonstrating their presence to their dear ones who
were still on this side of the veil. We must take
care always to keep ourselves well fed on good and
nourishing food and to spend time on the considera-
tion of our clothes, because when we were well fed
and dressed our minds possessed a certain peace and
satisfaction which they couldn't possess if we were
badly dressed and under-nourished, and that that
feeling of bodily satisfaction was essential to our
spiritual welfare. The ladies in the audience looked
at one another and nodded their heads as if they
thought that what she was saying was quite true.
Then she said what a terrible disappointment it
would be to any spirit revisiting this earth with the
best and most affectionate intentions to find itself
lodged in a body that was worried and nerve-racked
through want of proper food and clothing. Such a
state of things would not be fair either to ourselves
or to our dear ones that had passed, and we must
take great care to avoid it, otherwise we could not
hope to do our duty to ourselves or to our friends
either on this side or the other. She said some other
things as well, but that was the longest part, and the
part which the ladies liked best and which was
easiest to understand.
Then she began to pass the backs of her hands

I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 21 3

over her forehead again and look wild and worried
and she said she could feel the approach of spirit
control. She said that as the control always took so
much out of her she was obliged to have two pro-
fessional ladies present to massage her when she felt
that she was getting overcome. Then two ladies
came up and sat in two chairs just below the platform
facing the audience. They were the professional
ladies. They looked severe and took off their
gloves and rolled back their sleeves, and the ladies
in the audience glanced at one another again and
nodded and raised their eyebrows.

Then the spiritualist lady rubbed her forehead
again and said that she would like some music to
obtain the most favourable possible atmospheric
condition, and a plump rosy lady sitting at the end
of the row in which I was with a hurdy-gurdy on a
table in front of her began to turn the handle to
grind a tune. She was dressed in black, but a filmy
fashionable sort of black, and she had little diamond
ear-rings in her ears. She was pinker and plumper
than anybody else and looked soft and good to eat,
like a nice cream pudding. She was staring so hard
at the spiritualist lady that her eyes looked as if they
would start out of her head, and her mouth was a
little open. Then the spiritualist lady got down
from the platform with her eyes shut and her arms

214 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

spread out and began to sway about the room and
bump against the furniture. The grown-up young
lady whispered to me that this was a most solemn
moment and that she was in a trance and under the
control of spirits.

Some of the spirits were English, and some were
Irish, and some were Scotch, and some were of other
nations, and whichever spirit it was controlling her
made her speak with its own particular accent.
They all seemed to be in great trouble, or as if they
couldn't stand the climate, and she began to groan
and scream most sadly.

She said, " Oh, it's so da-a-a-rk ! I can't se-e-e ! "
And, " Oh ! it's co-o-o-ld ! I'm tre-e-e-e-mbling ! "
and then she stood still for a moment for us to see
her trembling. Then she went on wriggling again
and throwing her arms about and turning round on
her heels and doing a great many other very peculiar
things.

When the spirits found out that it was no use
complaining and that they would have to make the
best of things, they began to settle down a little and
wonder where they were, and ask to have things
properly explained. When it was a Scotch spirit it
said, " Where am I } Oh ! A dinna ken ! A dinna
ken ! " When it was Irish it said, " Och ! begorra,
phwere the diwil am I got to } Phwill ye tell me,

I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 21 5

plaze ? " And when it was a French one it said,
" Ah, I implore you, vill you 'ave ze kindness to tell
me vere I find myselves ? "

The ladies in the audience kept whispering
together, and one of them, a stout elderly lady in the
front row, kept saying to the spirits, " Don't be
frightened. No one will hurt you. You are among
good, kind, loving friends."

The lady with the hurdy-gurdy went on grinding
out the proper sort of tune. When it was time for
the spirit to change she touched a spring and ground
a different one. When the spirit was Scotch she
played " The Bonnets of Bonnie Dundee'' When it
was Irish she played " Kathleen Mavourneen,'' and
when it was French she played the " Marseillaise.'*

She still looked dreadfully frightened, as though
she might be going to make a mistake in the music.
She seemed to be clinging on to the hurdy-gurdy
with fear. But she couldn't have made a mistake
really, because she had a little programme written in
pencil with the list of tunes she was to play spread
out on the hurdy-gurdy in front of her, and the right
sort of spirit always came to the music she played,
just as though it had all been properly arranged
beforehand.

At last the spiritualist lady gave a loud and awful
groan and fell back into an armchair that had been

2l6 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

put ready for her to do it in between the two pro-
fessional ladies, and they began to stroke her head
and wipe the perspiration from her brow and rub
her arms and hands and feet very professionally.
She was still wriggling and groaning and they kept
comforting her and saying, " It's all right now, dear !
There's nothing to fret about. You've done us all
a great, great service, and we're very, very grateful
to you. There ! You're better now ! "

Then they frowned and said she really did too
much in her anxiety to be helpful to others, but it
took it out of her dreadfully, and her friends were
not going to be selfish.

Then the spiritualist lady left off groaning and
said she was beginning to feel better, and she sat for
some time with her face hidden in her hands,
shivering a little and giving a sudden jerk from time
to time, and while she was doing that the lady who
had played the hurdy-gurdy went round with a
plate and made a collection.

When she had finished the spiritualist lady
recovered and said there was still time for a few
cases of special investigation, and would any one who
desired spiritual help come up and sit in the front
row.

Only one lady besides myself and the grown-up
young lady remained. It was getting near lunch-

I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 21 J

time and the rest seemed to melt away like magic.
The grown-up young lady said that if it had not
been so near a meal time a great many more would
have required spiritual help, and she told me to
go and sit beside the other lady in the front row
and see what the medium would say to me. We
sat side by side and the spiritualist lady sat in front
of us.

The lady next to me was very small and thin, but
she looked as though she must be very rich. She
had a little, anxious, pointed face, quite covered with
tiny lines and wrinkles, and pale grey hair beauti-
fully waved with curling-tongs, and a long black
lace veil on her hat. Her eyes looked very sad and
wistful.

She said to the medium in a little gentle voice,
" Have you any message from my son to-day ? "
And the spiritualist lady shut her eyes and passed
her hands across them and said, " Yes ... it is
growing clear. ... I can see distinctly. . . . Give
me your hands."

And the lady put her tiny little hands covered with
sparkling rings into the medium's, and I could see
them tremble. She said, " Are you here, Ronald,
my son ? " And the medium answered as though
it was the lady's son speaking, " Yes, mother."
The lady said, " Is it well with you, my dear ? "

21 8 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

Her voice was trembling too. The son said, " Yes,
mother, but I miss you very much. I wish you were
here with me." And the lady whispered, '* My
darling boy ! "

Her face was shining as though she could really
see her boy and were close to him. She seemed to
have forgotten that anybody else was there. She
didn't speak for a few moments. She seemed to be
looking and looking at her boy, too happy even to
want to say anything to him. And at last she said,
" Can you see me, Ronald ? " And the son said,
" Yes, mother, but I cannot show myself to you yet.
Some day I shall be able to." And she said in a very
low voice, " Yes, yes, I know, I'm waiting . . ."
Then after another few moments she said, ** It will
be your birthday in a few days. You will be nine-
teen. I shall be thinking of you ..." And the
medium said, as though it were the son speaking,
" Come again soon, mother. Come as often as you
can. It's such a help to me." And she said, " Yes,
yes, my dear, I will."

Then the medium let go of the lady's hands and
she dropped her veil over her face and went away
out of the room on tiptoe, like a shadow, without
making the slightest sound. We did not move till
she had gone, and then the medium drew her chair
in front of mine and took hold of my hands and shut

I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 21 9

her eyes and said, " L L Can you think of

anybody whose name begins with L ? " I said yes,
that we had had an undernurse called Louisa when
I was quite a little girl, before my father died. The
spiritualist lady looked cheerful and said, " Yes, yes,
Louisa. That's the name I'm trying to get. I
can see her quite plainly. She's standing close
beside you. It is evidently your nurse, because she
has on a white cap and apron. She is stooping down
with her hand quite near the ground, raising it
higher little by little. She means to say, * What a
big girl you have grown. Miss, since I saw you last.*
She is smiling and raising her arms to show how
pleased and surprised she is that you have grown so
much."

But Louisa wasn't dead at all. She had been to
see me only the week before, and she was coming
the following week as well. Even if she had died
in between she couldn't have been very much
surprised to see how much I had grown in a
week. But I didn't say so. I just said, " Thank
you very much." Then she said that she had seen
at once that I was very psychic and that I ought
to attend the meetings regularly in order to develop
my gifts. I said, " Thank you," again, and we came
away.

When we got outside the grown-up young lady

220 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

asked me whether I had Uked the meeting. I said
not very much because the spirituaHst lady had not
explained any of the things I wanted to know about »
and the spirits had not said anything really interesting.
She was offended. She said it was because I had
not put myself into the proper frame of mind, and
that she herself had derived great spiritual consola-
tion from the meeting and had greatly added to her
store of knowledge.

A few days later she took me to another meeting,
but not in a fashionable quarter. It was in a big
house in a gloomy street and it had " Bedroom to let
for single gentleman " written on a card in the
window on the right-hand side of the door. We
went into the passage and paid a shilling each to
a gentleman with crooked eyes and a husky voice
who had some literature in a basket hung round his
neck.

The grown-up young lady said that the meetings
held in this house were considered particularly good,
and that the gentleman who conducted them was a
celebrated medium who had been the bosom friend
and spiritual adviser of another celebrated gentleman
who wrote in the newspapers. I felt very interested
and glad that I was going to see him, and we went
into the room.

He was a tiny man with black hair and small

I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 221

bright eyes and a yellow face and dirty finger-nails.
He seemed to be darting about all over the room
talking to the people. When we came in he darted
over to us and shook hands with us and said, " 'Ow
do you do, young ladies ? I'm very glad to see you.
Will you come and sit near the fire or will you find
it too 'ot ? "

We sat on chairs near the door and waited twenty
minutes for the meeting to begin. There were a lot
of people sitting round the room on chairs and on a
low wide sofa against the left-hand wall. Some
looked rich, but some were poorly dressed and
looked quite ordinary. There were several gentle-
men in skimpy suits with damp hair and dull eyes
and pasty faces, and one elderly gentleman with
white hair and moustaches, and a red forehead and
blue irritable-looking eyes.

One gentleman in a skimpy suit, a young gentle-
man, was the celebrated medium's assistant. He
told us that at eight o'clock punctually the doors
would be closed and the celebrated medium would
go into a trance under the control of an Egyptian
spirit called Jumbo, who had been mangled and
boiled alive hundreds of years ago. He said that
one evening the Egyptian spirit had quite un-
expectedly given a description of the exact sensations
he had experienced while being boiled and that

222 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

the audience had considered it most striking and
interesting.

At eight o'clock the door was shut and the cele-
brated medium turned down the gas and sat down
in an armchair underneath the gas bracket. He
closed his eyes and folded his hands and jerked first
one shoulder and then another. That was to show
that he was going into a trance. Then he suddenly
began to speak in an awfully deep voice, much
deeper than the one he had spoken to us in. It was
really the Egyptian spirit, Jumbo, speaking. The
Egyptian spirit said that he had often been asked by
seekers after the truth on this side for some descrip-
tion of the life beyond the grave, and that now he
was going to give them in a few words some of his
own experiences. He could safely say that the life
beyond the grave was a 'appy life, supposing that
our conduct on this side of the grave had been such
as to entitle us to 'appiness on the other. He said
that some spirit friends were discontented for a bit
and found that that life was not all they could wish
that life to be. Some spirit friends was actually
violent when they first come across and even used
bad language, but they was soon brought to reason
by other spirit friends what knew the truth and
taught that the path of love was the path to 'appiness,
and then they settled down. He said that some

I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 223

friends on this side was anxious to 'ave a glimpse of
everyday life on the other side, and wanted to know
whether there was streets and 'ouses on the other
side like there was on this. He was there to tell
them that there was, and that walking down the
street on the other side was very similar to walking
down the street on this. There was 'ouses along
both sides of the streets with windows in them,
though it was a curious fact that many of the 'ouses
'ad no doors. There was 'angings in the windows
just as there was in the windows on this side, and
there was 'angings on the walls as well. But the
difference was that you could pass your 'and right
through the 'angings on the other side and feel
nothing and make no impression on them at all.
He said that was a strange and interesting fact that
had repeatedly been taken notice of.

When he had got as far as this there was a knock
at the street door and the assistant jumped up and
said below his breath, " Room full ! " and went
towards the door of the room. But the celebrated
medium suddenly said in his own voice, though he
didn't have to come out of the trance to do it:
" There's room for one on the sofa."

And so there was. And the assistant went out
and opened the street door and came in again
followed by a very tall stout lady shabbily dressed

224 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

in black. She had a broad round face and bright
blue eyes and a big friendly smile. She walked
across the room on tiptoe with long steps so as not
to disturb the other people, and kept saying, " Very
sorry, I'm sure," and she sat down heavily on the
end of the sofa which gave an awful creak, and the
other people on it had to huddle close together
because she took up much more room than any
ordinary person.

The celebrated medium was still in a trance
waiting to go on with the address, but she didn't
know he was, and she kept nodding to people in a
very friendly way and saying, " Good evening to
you," and then she began to explain how it was that
she had come so late. She said she had got off the
very minute she had finished washing up the supper
things, but that she had had to keep waiting about
for 'busses, which does keep anybody back so.

When the celebrated medium saw that the other
people were listening to her instead of waiting for
Jumbo to go on with the address, he came out of the
trance and turned up the gas. The stout lady went
on talking, and the other people were interested.
She said that, though they might not think it, she
and her family were in great trouble, and that a kind
lady had given her a shilling and paid her bus fare
from Hammersmith, where she lived, and told her to

I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 225

come here, for she would be certain to find help.
She said that she was the mother-in-law of a burglar,
but that he was not really a burglar, but had been
falsely accused. She said he was as straight and
steady a man as ever walked the earth. Why the
police thought he was a burglar was because they had
caught him with a big bag full of burglar's tools one
foggy night. What had really happened was that
he had been for a walk with some friends who had
bad characters and they had shoved the bag into his
hand and took theirselves off when they see the
coppers coming round the comer. If he had had
the sense to drop the bag and run it never would
have happened, it being so foggy. But he never see
the coppers till they was close upon him. He had
since written heart-breaking letters on blue paper
from the prison begging his little ones to be careful
whom they played with in the street, because his
own misfortune was entirely due to the keeping of
low company. The mother-in-law said that, in this
case, as in every other, the wife and children suffered
most, and what to do to help her daughter and the
little ones to get a bit of food she sometimes did not
know. There were four of them and the twins were
still in arms, as you might say. She had often
thought that if she could have had a bit of a talk with
her dear old grandfather, who had died five years

226 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

ago at seventy-nine, it would have done her a world
of good. She had lived along of him before he died
and was the very spit of him except for being taller.
She had never known him fail her when it was a
matter of giving good advice. She said he was a
fine old gentleman, and excepting for a hasty temper
and being a trifle near, for which nobody could
blame him, hadn't got a fault. He was that saving
and economical that any one could scarcely credit it,
and when once a lady had bought him a pair of
brand new boots, instead of getting them for him on
the instalment system at the rag-shop, as he used to
do himself, he kept them inside the bottom of his
bed and covered them up carefully with the sheets
and blankets in the day time for fear any one should
steal them from him, and went on wearing his old
ones though his feet was on the ground. And when
the lady came to see how he liked his new boots she
thought at first that he had pawned them when she
saw him wearing the old ones, but he pulled back
the bedclothes and showed her the boots lying side
by side, safe and comfortable, all black and shining
like a nigger woman's twins. And the lady was so
pleased to see them there that she promised to buy
him a new pair when they were worn out. The
burglar's mother-in-law said she wasn't going to sit
there and say the old man never took a glass, because

I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 227

it wouldn't be the truth. But he never paid for one
himself and never drank unless he was invited.
The lady who had given her the shilling had told
her that she could be put into touch with the
spirit of her grandfather if she came here, and
since she heard the words she felt she couldn't keep
away.

The people in the audience were all extremely
interested, and one very old lady with thin white
hair and a shaking head pointed to the celebrated
medium and said, " This gentleman can help you,"
and the burglar's mother-in-law nodded and smiled
at him and said, " I should take it very kindly, sir,
I'm sure."

Then the celebrated medium shut his eyes and
jerked his shoulders one by one again and waited a
few minutes and then said in a dreamy manner,
" What ? yes . . . yes . . . it's growing clearer
. . . no, I can't see . . . yes, I can ... I see the
figure now quite plainly ... it is that of an aged
man . . . with white 'air ... of somewhat stout
build . . . with blue eyes . . . and a cheerful
countenance . . . with a good deal of colour in 'is
cheeks ... 'is nose is on the fleshy side, and some-
what swollen. ..."

The burglar's mother-in-law was nearly struck
dumb with astonishment. She said, " If that ain't

228 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

gran 'pa to the life ! " And she looked all round the
room at the other people with her eyes wide open,
and she said, " You could knock me down with a
feather ! I wouldn't never have believed it if I
hadn't heard it ! It's gran 'pa to the Ufe ! "

Then the celebrated medium said in a still dreamier
voice, " He seems to be pointing . . . pointing
downwards . . . towards his feet . . . He is trying
to tell me something . . . but I can't quite under-
stand what he means."

The burglar's mother-in-law was quite excited,
and she said, " Well, I can tell what he means then,
if you can't. He means them very boots I was
a-telling you about. That's what he means, right
enough."

Then she looked all round the room again and
said, " I wouldn't never have believed it if I hadn't
heard it. Never ! "

Then the celebrated medium said, " He seems to
be trying to communicate to me some word that
begins with G. . . . I can't quite get it. . . . He
seems impatient that he is not understood im-
mediately . . ."

And the burglar's mother-in-law said, still quite
excited, " He would be ! That's him all over !
Didn't I say he was hasty-tempered ? It's gran 'pa
he's a-trying to say. That's what that is, right

I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 229

enough. Well, I never ! Who'd have thought it
possible ? "

I never saw any one so much astonished.

Then the celebrated medium wriggled and
stretched out his hands, and some one in the audience
said to the burglar's mother-in-law, " Put your hands
in his and perhaps you will get a message from your
grandpapa."

And the burglar's mother-in-law tiptoed across the
room again, full of joy and excitement, and put her
hands in the celebrated medium's, and he said as
though it was the burglar's mother-in-law's grand-
father speaking, " Is it you, grand-daughter } "

And she said, " Yes, it is, gran'pa. It's Ellen."
And the gran'pa said, " Thank you for coming to see
me, grand-daughter." And she said, ** I'd have
come a jolly sight sooner, gran'pa, if I'd have known
you was so handy. I only wish I had." And the
gran'pa said, " I know you are in trouble, Ellen, and
I'm very sorry to know it. And I'm very sorry for
the wife and them poor little children."

And the burglar's mother-in-law said, ** You're
right. Can you give me any notion, gran'pa, what
I ought to do to help them ? She goes out working
by the day, poor girl, but it don't bring in much. I
mind the children while she's gone. Can you think
of anything I could do to help them, gran'pa ? "

230 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

And the grandfather said, " Yes, I can, Ellen.
This is what you've got to do. Remember that I
am always near you, watching over you, and don't
worry. When things seems to be at their worst
they'll mend and be put right. Don't you trouble
your 'ead about anything. It will all be for the best
in the end. There was a meaning in it."

And she said, " Thank you, gran'pa, I'll try to
think so. And it will be a powerful sight of comfort
to know you're watching over us. Can you tell me
something more, gran'pa } "

And he said, ** Be careful, Ellen, when you are
taking them twins across 'Ammersmith Broadway in
the perambulator. It's a nasty bit, that there, and
my 'eart's often been in my mouth when I've been
watching you. Go slow, Ellen, go slow. Put 'em
in the pram by all means if they're too 'eavy to carry,
but be careful 'ow you go."

She said, *' You're right, gran'pa, you are indeed.
I'll be careful."

And the grandfather said, " Good-bye, Ellen ; I
must go now. Come again soon, Ellen, and don't
forget I'm always waiting for you."

And she said, " That I will, if I have to pop my
wedding ring to do it."

And she tiptoed back across the room with a
happy face and said when she sat down, *' If I didn't

I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 23 1

take them blessed twins across the Broadway in the
pram this very morning ! I never would have
believed it if I hadn't heard it with my own ears,
never ! "

And she sat down in her place again and kept
nodding her head in a surprised way to herself as
though she were still saying to herself that she never
would have believed it.

Then the celebrated medium began to describe
other spirits that he could see standing or sitting
about the room. Some were old, some middle-aged,
and some quite young. One was a little baby lying
in a lady's lap. Nobody could see them except the
celebrated medium, but he said he could. The old
gentleman with the irritable-looking eyes asked if
there was an Indian among them, because he wanted
to be put into touch with a Hindu gentleman whom
he had known. And the celebrated medium said
that there was an Indian standing quite close to him,
evidently very much interested in him. He said,
** He has some long bright-coloured feathers in his
'air and the scars of wounds and scratches on his
cheeks, and he is brandishing a war-like weapon like
a tomahawk."

The old gentleman was offended. He said his
friend was a wise and learned Hindu, a great scholar,
and that he would never dream of putting feathers

232 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

in his hair and scratching his face and brandishing a
tomahawk. The celebrated medium was a httle
offended too. He said that Indians was Indians all
the world over and was not like us, and you could
never tell what members of them black, uncivilised
races might not take it into their 'eads to get up to.
The old gentleman got quite angry and answered
back and said that it was ridiculous to confound a
learned Hindu with an American Red Indian.

The meeting broke up soon after that, and the
celebrated medium told me as we went out that he
had seen as soon as I came into the room that I was
extremely psychic, and that I ought to develop my
gifts by attending the meetings regularly.

I went to a good many other meetings, but they
did not do me any more good than the first two had
done. They were all alike. The mediums all gave
the same sort of addresses and then said the spirits
were in the room, and the audience believed they
were because the medium said so. But no one else
ever saw them. A good many spirits came to see me
and gave me messages, but I couldn't understand
them, and didn't know who the spirits were. When
I said so the mediums were offended and said coldly,
" I am sorry to be so unsuccessful." The grown-up
young lady was offended too, and always said it was
because I did not put myself into a proper frame of

I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 233

mind. I felt like a naughty girl at school, but I
couldn't help it. I didn't know what the proper
frame of mind was or how to get into it, but she said
it was because I set my face against it and didn't
want to know and understand. She said, as the nuns
had said, that what I lacked was faith. When once
I had faith I should find it easy to believe in and
understand about Perfect Truth and Perfect Love and
the Immense Realities and all the other great and
important things I wanted to understand. If she
and all the other people at the meetings did not have
faith they would never be able to believe in all the
things that happened at the meetings, but would live
in darkness and be in the same unhappy position in
which I was myself. She wasn't kind and sorry for
me as the nuns had been when I didn't believe in
going to hell, but angry and irritable. At last she
said that she would write an article about that too,
explaining everything, called the " Absolute Essen-
tiality of Faith " (I think that was what she said it
would be called), and that when it was published I
should read it and then perhaps I should understand.
I said, " Thank you very much." I didn't want to
argue because she was so easily offended.

Some of the people told me that they had been to
meetings where the spirits really appeared, but only
under very favourable circumstances. They would

234 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

not show themselves unless everything had been
properly prepared. I said I should like to go to
some of those meetings, but they said that I must
not, because I v^^as too young and inexperienced.
The spirits at those meetings were sometimes a very
mixed and shady lot, and there were some shocking
characters among them that needed keeping in their
places with a firm, strong hand. If you happened
to be present when they " materialised," they might
take a fancy to you and make your life a perfect
misery. One lady told me that a very bad spirit had
taken a fancy to her, and that whenever she went out
to dine it stood upon the doorstep of the house and
kept on knocking loud double knocks at the street
door, and when the servants opened the door there
was no one there and they were offended and
threatened to give notice. Since then she had never
dined out in comfort, because even when it wasn't
knocking she thought it was and imagined she heard
it, and it made her nervous and spoilt the taste of
everything she ate. She said there were some
incorrigible practical jokers among the spirits who
never understood when they had gone far enough.

It all sounded very strange and funny. I couldn't
understand why the dead should want to come to
speak through the mouths of people like the
spiritualist lady or the celebrated medium. They

I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 235

never seemed to choose people who looked gentle
and well educated. All the mediums I saw had the
same hard, empty faces and common way of speak-
ing. Not one of them looked as though they could
be liked or trusted. And when I thought of my
grandfather speaking to me through the mouth of
the celebrated medium with his dirty finger-nails in
that common room with the ugly gas bracket in
front of all the people as the burglar's mother-in-law's
grandfather had done, or mixing with the shady lot
of spirits and the incorrigible practical jokers that
stood on doorsteps and knocked run-away double
knocks just for spite, I felt that it was all impossible,
and I gave up going to the meetings.

But I still felt anxious to have something to
believe in.

Then one day my eldest brother* came to stay
with us. He was a fair, clever young man, rather
scornful, with smooth pink cheeks and a medium-
sized hooked nose like my grandfather's, a high,
intellectual forehead, and quiet, absent-looking blue
eyes that seemed as if they were always pondering
over something. I was nervous with him, because he
was very critical and thought that nearly every one
was stupid and not worth disagreeing with. But he
was very kind and liked to take me out to tea. He
* Ford Madox-Hueffer.

236 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

wore a black coat with a cape over the shoulders, and
when we took hands and walked along it floated out
a little way behind.

Once he took me a long way to see a famous
gentleman* who lived outside London. His house
was quite a plain-looking little house, and when we
went in there were a lot of people sitting round the
table in a tiny dining-room having tea. He had a
very long, broad, silky-grey beard, that fell down
right over his chest and was wider at the end than
at the beginning. There was no hair at all on his
head, but he had on a pair of big round spectacles.
His eyes were not bright, but they were wonderfully
kind and understanding. I noticed them in a
moment, because I had not seen such kind and
understanding eyes since my grandfather died.
They looked as though they could see to the end of
the world and understand the tiniest thing they met,
and were sorry for all the people that were unhappy.
They made me feel he must be almost holy {not
religious).

He was one of the most learned men alive, but he
was not too proud to talk to me although there were
a lot of other people and I was so ignorant. And
when we had been talking for some time I told him
about the convent and the spiritualist meetings, and
• Prince Peter Kropotkin.

I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 237

that I felt worried because everything seemed so
difficuh to believe in, and everybody quarrelled so
much about their beliefs. But he said that I need
not worry, and that all little people needed to believe
in was kindness and pity and love (just ordinary love
for one another, not perfect love or anything com-
plicated), and that our whole duty was to do what
little good we could in the world as we passed through
it, and to try to understand as much as possible of
the wonders that surround us, and help others to
understand them. He said it was ridiculous to
imagine that a God who could create such a mighty
and wonderful universe would be so petty as to care
whether we crossed ourselves with two fingers or
with three, or whether we ate fish or meat on Fridays,
or what sort of church we went to, or what sort of
prayers we said, or that He would wish to punish us
for doing or not doing any of those things at all, so
long as we had done our best so far as we could
understand. He said we could quite safely go upon
our way doing what we felt to be right without
worrying about the consequences to ourselves
hereafter.

He said that in Russia there had once been a great
saint who taught the people how to live and had
such a wonderful effect upon them that all the other
saints in the neighbourhood were offended and the

238 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD

religious people said that he was anti-Christ. He
didn't teach them about the proper way to be saved ;
all he said was, " Love one another." And because
he was so good and gentle and because they loved
and honoured him so much they did what he told
them and lived in peace and were very happy. And
later, when he was very old and when death was near,
he retired with one or two disciples to the top of a
mountain to die in peace, but great multitudes of the
people followed him even there. And in order not
to disappoint them he told his disciples to carry him
out to them. And he was just able to lift his hand
and bless them and whisper, " Children, love one
another ! " And they fell on their knees before him
and swore to do his bidding. And the country all
round the mountain was like paradise because the
people were so well-behaved and never quarrelled
or fought, or stole from one another or were cruel,
because they loved one another. And God was
pleased. And when the saint was safely dead and
buried the other saints and religious people forgave
him.

The learned gentleman said that the saint's lesson
was the greatest lesson, and when once we had
learnt it we should be happy and everything else
would be made clear to us.

I said, " Thank you very much." And when

I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 239

afterwards I thought about what he had said, it
seemed true and easy to understand and beUeve in.
And I was glad because I thought I should not have
to waste my time in worrying any more.

For I was growing a big girl, and there were so
many things I had to learn and think about.

TBE WHITEFRIARS PRESS, LTD., LONDON AND TONBRIDGB.

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